Our master's voice: advertising

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OUR MASTER'S VOICE

ADVERTISING

OUR

MASTER'S
VOICE

ADVERTISING

BY JAMES RORTY

THE JOHN DAY COMPANY
New York

COPYRIGHT, 1934, BY JAMES RORTY

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

FOR THE JOHN DAY COMPANY, INC.

BY H. WOLFF, NEW YORK

Dedicated to the memory of Thorstein Veblen,
and to those technicians of the 'word whose
r< 'conscientious withdrawal of efficiency" may
yet accomplish that burial of the ad-man's
pseudoculture which this book contemplates
with equanimity.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

JAMES RORTY was born March 30, 1890 in
Middletown, New York. He was educated in
the public schools, served an early journalistic
apprenticeship on a daily newspaper in Middle-
town, and was graduated from Tufts College.
Mr. Rorty was a copy- writer for an advertising
agency from 1913 to 1917, at which time he
enlisted as a stretcher bearer in the United States
Army Ambulance Service. He was awarded the
Distinguished Service Cross for service in the
Argonne offensive.

Since the war Mr. Rorty has worked variously
as an advertising copy-writer, publicity man,
newspaper and magazine free lance. He is the
author of two books of verse, "What Michael
Said to the Census Taker" and "Children of
the Sun", and has contributed to the Nation,
New Republic, New Masses, Freeman, New
Freeman, and Harpers.

CONTENTS

FOREWORD ix

PREFACE: / Was an Ad-man Once 3

1 THE BUSINESS NOBODY KNOWS 13

2 THE APPARATUS OF ADVERTISING 21

3 How IT WORKS: The Endless Chain of Salesmanship 34

4 PRIMROSE CHEESE: An Advertising Accouchement 45

5 As ADVERTISED: The Product of Advertising 6$

6 THE MAGAZINES:

I. The Command to Buy 73

II. Chromium is More Expensive 8 1

III. The Ad -man's Pseudoculture 104

7 THE NATURAL HISTORY OF ADVERTISING 134

8 THE THREE GRACES : Advertising, Propaganda, Edu-

cation 145

9 TRUTH IN ADVERTISING 174

vii

10 CHAIN Music: The Truth About the Shavers 190

11 BEAUTY AND THE AD-MAN 201

12 SACRED AND PROFANE LOVE 220

1 3 SCIENCE SAYS: Come up and see me some time 231

1 4 WHOSE SOCIAL SCIENTIST ARE YOU ? 235

15 PSYCHOLOGY ASKS: How am I doing? 241

1 6 THE MOVIES 252

17 RULE BY RADIO 265

1 8 RELIGION AND THE AD-MAN 279

19 EVOLUTION OF THE AMERICAN HERO 291

20 THE CARPENTER RE-CARPENTERED 312

21 A GALLERY OF PORTRAITS 332

22 GOTTERDAMMERUNG: Advertising and the Depression 546

23 NIRA THE AD-MAN ON THE JOB 354

24 ALL FOR PURITY 362

25 CALL FOR MR. THROTTLEBOTTOM 371

26 CONCLUSION: Problems and Prospects 381

viii

FOREWORD

TWO BASIC definitions will perhaps assist the reader to
understand the scope and intent of this book.

The advertising business is taken to mean the total appara-
tus of newspaper and magazine publishing in America, plus
radio broadcasting, and with important qualifications the
movies; plus the advertising agency structure, car card, pos-
ter, and direct-by-mail companies, plus the services of supply:
printing, lithography, engraving, etc. which are largely de-
pendent upon the advertising business for their existence.

The advertising technique is taken to mean the technique
of manufacturing customers by producing systematized illu-
sions of value or desirability in the minds of the particular
public at which the technique is directed.

The book is an attempt, by an advertising man and jour-
nalist, to tell how and why the traditional conception and
function of journalism has lapsed in this country. It de-
scribes the progressive seizure and use, by business, of the
apparatus of social communication in America. Naturally,
this story has not been "covered", has not been considered fit
to print, in any newspaper or magazine dependent for its
existence upon advertising.

In attempting to examine the phenomenon of American
advertising in the context of the culture it became necessary
to examine the culture itself and even to trace its economic
and ideological origins. This enlargement of scope necessitated
a somewhat cursory and inadequate treatment of many de-
tailed aspects of the subject. The writer accepted this limita-
tion, feeling that what was chiefly important was to establish,

ix

if possible, the essential structure and functioning of the
phenomena.

Since the book is presented not as sociology, but as journal-
ism, the writer felt free to use satirical and even fictional
literary techniques for whatever they might yield in the way
of understanding and emphasis. The writer wishes to ac-
knowledge gratefully the help and encouragement he has
received from many friends in and out of the advertising
business. The section on "The Magazines" is almost wholly
the work of Winifred Raushenbush and Hal Swanson.
Thanks are due to Professor Robert Lynd for reading portions
of the manuscript and for many stimulating suggestions; to
Professor Sidney Hook for permission to quote from unpub-
lished manuscripts; to F. J. Schlink and his associates on the
staff of Consumers' Research for permission to use certain
data; to Stuart Chase for much useful counsel and encourage-
ment; to Dr. Meyer Schapiro for valuable criticisms of the
manuscript and to Elliot E. Cohen for help in revising the
proofs; to the officials of the Food and Drug Administrations
for courteously and conscientiously answering questions.

OUR MASTER'S VOICE

ADVERTISING

"I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him."
WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

"A trading on that range of human infirmities
that blossoms in devout observances and bears
fruit in the psychopathic wards."

THORSTEIN VEBLEN

"Business succeeds rather better than the state
in imposing its restraints upon individuals, be-
cause its imperatives are disguised as choices."

WALTON HAMILTON

PREFACE:

I Was an Ad-man Once

IMAGINE, if you can, the New York of 1913. In that year a
young man just out of college was laying siege to the city
desks of the metropolitan papers. He had good legs, but his
past record included nothing more substantial than having
been fired out of college, and having worked before college,
and during vacations, on a small-city paper upstate; also on
a Munsey-owned Boston paper. It was the last count that did
for him. He couldn't laugh that off anywhere, and funds were
getting low.

Finally, a relative got the young man a job as a copy
writer in an advertising agency, housed near the Battery in an
ancient loft building which has since been torn down. Per-
haps it is time to drop the third person. The young man was
myself. I remember him well, although at this distance both
the person and his actions seem a little unreal.

The young man didn't know anybody, or anything much.
At that time he hadn't even read H. G. Wells' Tono-Bun-
gay. But he was full of fervor. His father was an Irish
Fenian who believed to the end of his days that the world
was just on the point of becoming decent and sensible, and
the young man, to tell the truth, has had trouble in over-
coming that paternal misapprehension.

In those days business had pretty well beaten the muck-
raking magazines by the painless process of seizing them
through the business office. But the old Masses was going full

3

blast, and the blond beasts of the New Republic were about
to launch their forays upon the sheepfolds of the Faithful.

The young man was a Socialist already, in sympathy at
least, although in the matter of fundamental economics and
sociology he was as illiterate as most of his contemporaries.
He was literary; that is to say, he knew Ibsen, and Haupt-
man, and Shaw, and Jack London, and Samuel Butler even
a little Nietzsche. Not until some years later did he come to
know Karl Marx and Thorstein Veblen.

But life was real and landladies were earnest. The young
man was hungry. He had a job now and he was taking no
chances. He was assured that at the end of the month he
would be paid sixty dollars for his services, in negotiable
currency. It was up to him to earn that sixty dollars. He was
young and energetic. During the economy wave under which
Mr. Munsey extinguished the Boston Journal, he, a cub re-
porter, had covered as many as three supposedly important
assignments in one day, being obliged, of course, to steal or
fake most of his facts.

The young man was given his first advertising-copy assign-
ment: to write some forty advertisements commending a
certain brand of agricultural machinery about which he
knew nothing whatever. The young man took off his coat.

I wrote those forty advertisements in three days, with my
eye on the clock. Three days is ten per cent of thirty days. Ten
per cent of sixty dollars is six dollars. Were those forty
advertisements a big enough stint to earn those six dollars?
Trembling, I turned in my copy ... it was enough for a
year.

The copy was fully up to current standards, too, as adver-
tising copy, although of course it went through endless
meaningless revisions. As news and information it didn't, at
the time, seem to me to be worth the price. I still don't think
so. But in those three days I learned all that any bright young
man needed to know about the mysteries of advertising copy-

4

writing in order to earn, in 1929, not sixty dollars a month,
but a hundred and sixty dollars a week. I say this in the teeth
of the Harvard School of Business Administration, the ap-
prentice courses of all the agencies, Dr. John B. Watson, and
the old sea lion in the Aquarium to whom, in my dazed and
shaken condition, I turned for comfort and understanding.

The Aquarium was close at hand. During the noon hour
I would sit on a bench in Battery Park, eating my necessarily
frugal lunch of peanuts and chocolate, and then spend the
remaining half -hour wandering among the glass cases and
peering at the fishes, who peered back at me with their flat
eyes and said nothing. Sometimes one of them would turn
on his side, his gills waving faintly. Nothing to do, nowhere
to go. We cried our eyes out over each other, I and the other
poor fishes.

Then I discovered the sea lion, who occupied a big pool in
the center of the main floor. The sea lion, I soon became
convinced, had some kind of an idea. There was a slanting
float at one end of the pool. He would start at the other end,
/dive, emerge halfway up the float with a tremendous rush,
and whoosh! he would blow water on the mob of children and
adults who crowded around the tank. Always they would
shriek, giggle, and retreat. Then, gradually, they would come
back; the sea lion would then repeat the performance with
precisely the same effect.

It has taken me years to understand that sea lion. I know
now that he was an advertising man. Recently, I became
acquainted with his human reincarnation, one of the ablest,
most philosophical, and best paid advertising men in New
York. If there is a "science" of advertising, he has mastered
it. Yet his formula is very simple. It is this: "Figure out what
they want, promise 'em everything, and blow hard."

This philosophical ancient is greatly valued as an instructor
of the young. His students are very promising, although some
of them are not wholly literate. He is, however, indulgent of

5

their cultural limitations, remarking kindly: "What are a
few split infinitives between morons?"

In the annex to the Aquarium where I served my adver-
tising apprenticeship there were many mansions, housing as
varied a collection of the human species as I have ever encoun-
tered together in one place. Through a stroke of luck, the
agency had started with a nucleus of important accounts and
expanded rapidly. Its owner, a quiet Swede who never, to
my knowledge while I was in his employ, wrote a single piece
of advertising copy himself, became a millionaire in a few
years. He was, then, an economist, a commercial engineer, an
executive of tremendous driving power? Not so that anybody
could notice it. His success is quite unexplainable in terms of
logic or common sense. I think he was just a "natural." Also,
he played golf well, but not too well. Puzzling over this
phenomenon, I remembered hearing the Socialists tell me there
is no sense in trying to make sense out of the people and
institutions of our chaotic capitalist civilization.

Nevertheless, the boss was a natural. Either by shrewdness
or by accident, he gathered into his organization a consider-
able number of able and interesting people. They didn't
know much about advertising. Nobody did in those days.
Six months after my initiation, the company moved to a
neighboring skyscraper, and the expanded copy staff soon
numbered eight people. We all sat in one large room. By right
of priority, I had a desk next the window where I could look
out and watch the ferry boats swimming about like water
beetles, and the tugs pushing liners out to sea, as ants push
big crumbs. They seemed so earnest, so determined. . . .
Every now and then an office boy would stroll by and deposit
in one of the desk baskets a yellow printed form with here
and there a little typing on it. The form called for one, two,
six or twelve advertisements about a certain product, to fit
specified spaces in certain scheduled publications. Usually the
form was destitute of other information or instruction.

6

I think, although I am not sure, that those forms were the
bequest of an efficiency expert who functioned briefly during
the early months of my employment. He was a tall, gangling
man, with a high white brow, a drooping forelock and a rapt
and questing eye. He dictated inspirational talks to his stenog-
rapher. While so engaged, he would pace up and down his
office and quite literally beat his breast. In fact, he had all the
equipment of a medicine man except the buffalo horns and
the rattlesnake belt. It was he, I think, who started the idea
of timing and systematizing the copy production of the office.
Years after he had left, unfortunate copy writers were still
digging the splinters of that system out of their pants.

You got a yellow form, then, which required that you
write so many pieces of copy and turn them in by a certain
date. What kind of copy? The form was silent. The headline
goes at the top, the slug at the bottom and what goes in be-
tween you rewrite from a booklet or make up out of your
head. Sometimes an illustration was called for. In such cases
you conferred with the art director, who was of the opinion
that you, your words, and especially your ideas about pictures
were a damned nuisance and so informed you.

I felt it necessary to resent such acerbities, but I could
never do so with any great conviction. Privately, I suspected
that he was right. Sometimes I was tempted to put my hands
on my hips and retort stoutly, "You're another." But I never
did so. That would have been to widen the field of discussion
intolerably. And there were always closing dates to meet.

Feeling as I did about it, it frequently seemed to me that
one advertisement would do exactly as well as six. But I
always wrote six. Anything to keep busy. There were never
enough yellow forms.

Sometimes, unable to control my restlessness, I would
wander upstairs, knock on the door of the account executive's
office, and ask mildly if anybody knew anything about that
product and what it was supposed to be used for. I knew

7

that many heavy conferences had preceded the planning of
that campaign. But the decisions reached in those conferences
never seemed to get typed on that yellow form. Usually I got
nothing out of such interviews except the suggestion that I
do some more like last year's, or that an ad was an ad, wasn't
it, and I was to have six done by Friday. Such admonitions
were heartbreaking. The ads were already done. Nothing to
do now except to stew miserably in the juice of my frustrated
energies.

In time, merciful nature came to my aid. I, who was
normally facile, as even a cub reporter has to be, found that
writing even a six-line tradepaper advertisement cost me in-
tolerable effort. My brain wouldn't function. My fingers were
paralyzed. I was fighting the cold wind of absurdity blowing
off the waste lands of our American commercial chaos. The
workman in me had been insulted. Very well, then, he would
strike. I dawdled. I covered reams of paper with idiotic pencil-
ings. I missed closing dates and didn't care. My fellow copy
writers, suffering the same tortures, would go out and get
drunk. One of them, in fact, who had genuine literary talent,
ultimately drank himself to death.

Since I was still a virtuous youth, I had no such escapes.
Even my health, which had been excellent, was shaken. I
began mumbling to myself on the street. Once, for three
weeks, an office associate converted me to Christian Science.

The Truth and the Light, he said, were in Mrs. Eddy's
Science and Health, which I accordingly undertook to read
for several evenings. I do not think I ever got beyond page
38, although I tried very hard. The difficulty was that it
didn't make sense at first reading, so that on resuming the
book I was always obliged to start over again from the begin-
ning. It was like driving a model T Ford uphill through sand.
At the end of three weeks I was utterly exhausted, and sleep-
ing soundly, but unable to bear another word of Mary Baker
Eddy.

8

I cite the episode merely to indicate how acute was my
condition. If my friend had been a Holy Roller, I think I
would have rolled for him cheerfully.

The workman in me was paralyzed. Even when, outside the
office, I tried to write poetry and plays the words and ideas
stared coldly at me from the page.

But the reformer in me still lived and was shortly to have
his inning. The house acquired as a client a company manu-
facturing a proprietary remedy. As it happened, it was an
excellent product, which, minus its proprietary name, was
much used and recommended by the medical profession.
There was my chance. I would make the advertising of that
product honest. I did make it honest, for a while. I had every
word of my copy censored by representative medical men.
I fought everybody in the office, singly and in groups. I was
obsessed, invincible and absurd.

But the client became impatient sales weren't growing
as fast as he thought they should. He hired as advertising
manager an experienced and entirely unscrupulous patent-
medicine salesman a leather-hided saurian who scrapped all
my carefully censored copy and furnished as a model for
future advertising an illiterate screed recommending the prod-
uct, directly or by implication, as a cure for everything from
tuberculosis to athlete's foot.

I threw him out of my office. I rushed over to the client
and talked very crudely to a very eminent gentleman. Even
that wasn't enough. I considered blowing the works to the
organized medical profession, although I never actually did
so. Instead, I wrote a furious and entirely unactable play
about a patent medicine wage-slave who went straight and
took a correspondence course in burglary.

I wasn't fired, although logically I should have been. The
President of the United States had just declared war, and in
the confusion I escaped into the army as a buck private. Even

9

the war, I thought, was more rational than the advertising
business. I was wrong, but that is another story.

I was an ad -man once. Indeed, I am, in a small way, an
ad -man still, although I no longer carry a spear in the
monotonously hilarious spectacles which the orthodox priests
continue sweatingly to produce in the Byzantine, Chino-
Spanish and Dada-Gothic temples of advertising which crowd
the Grand Central district of New York.

I still practice, however, after my fashion. My motto, "The
Less Advertising the Better," appeals poignantly to certain
eminent industrialists to whom I have talked. My sales argu-
ment goes something like this:

"Mr. Hoffschnagel, you and I are practical men. I don't
need to tell you that advertising is not an end in itself.
Neither is selling. The end, Mr. Hoffschnagel, the true objec-
tive of the manufacturer and dispenser of products and
services, should be the efficient and economical delivery to the
consumer of precisely what the consumer wants and needs:
what the consumer needs to buy, I repeat, not what the
manufacturer needs to sell him. In any functional relation-
ship between producer and consumer, advertising and sales
expenditures are just so much frictional loss; in the ideal set-
up, which of course we can't even approximate under present
conditions, released buying energy would be substituted en-
tirely for the selling energy which you now spend in breaking
down 'sales resistance.' My task, therefore, is to redefine and
reinterpret your relationship with your customers; not to pile
up sales and advertising expenses" Mr. Hoffschnagel nods
energetically "but to cut them. What do your customers
want from you? Service! What do you want to give them?
Service! Not advertising the less advertising the better
that's just so much friction and loss. But service! The end,
Mr. Hoffschnagel, the end is service!"

Mr. Hoffschnagel meditates, while as if unconsciously his
hand strays to the right-hand drawer of his desk.

10

"Have a drink," says Mr. Hoffschnagel.

It is possible to get a good deal of hospitality in this way,
and even some business. Sometimes, as I listen to myself talk,
I sound like one of these newly spawned capitalist economic
planners. I am not. I know, or think I know, that the adver-
tising business, with all of its wastes and chicaneries intact,
is woven into the very fabric of our competitive economic
system; that the only equilibrium possible for such a system
is the unstable equilibrium of accelerating change, with the
ad-man's foot on the throttle, speeding up consumption,
preaching emulative expenditure, "styling" clothes, kitchens,
automobiles everything, in the interest of more rapid ob-
solescence and replacement. Up to a certain point it is possible
to build, and after the inevitable crash, to rebuild such a sys-
tem always with a progressive and cumulative intensifica-
tion of wastes and conflicts. It is not possible to operate such
a system sanely and permanently, because its underlying eco-
nomic and social premises are obsolete in the modern world.

If this is so even some advertising men apprehend that it
may be so then it would be, perhaps, not a bad idea, if
ad-men removed their tongues from their long-swollen cheeks
and tried talking approximate sense for a change. It wouldn't
do much if any immediate good, of course, but it might pro-
vide a desirable mental discipline, a kind of intellectual prep-
aration for the severer disciplines which the future may hold
in store for the profession.

As a matter of fact, the abler people in advertising are be-
coming increasingly mature, realistic, and cynical. They
don't believe in the racket themselves. But they insist that
the guinea pigs, not merely the consumers outside the office,
but the minor employees inside the office, must believe in it.
The role of the advertising agency guinea pig the minor
copy writer, layout man, forwarding clerk or other carrier
of messages to Garcia is hard indeed. The outside guinea
pig, the consumer, can't be fired. But the inside guinea pig

ii

can be and is fired unless he is utterly and sincerely credulous
and faithful. A good, loyal guinea pig is a pearl without
price in any agency. I am even told that in some of the larger
agencies, eugenic experiments are being conducted with the
idea ultimately of breeding advertising guinea pigs, or pearls
I admit the metaphor is hopelessly mixed who will come
into the world crying "It Pays To Advertise".

To such heights of fantasy are we lifted by an attempt to
examine the phenomenon of contemporary advertising in
America. It is not, as contemporary liberal historians and
social critics have tended to regard it, a superficial phenom-
enon: a carbuncular excrescence of our acquisitive society,
curable by appropriate reformist treatment, or perhaps by
a minor operation.

A book about advertising therefore becomes inevitably a
critique of the society.

Much of the data presented in this book I have gathered in
my personal experience as an employee of various advertising
agencies. If some of this material seems absurd, even incredible
to the lay reader, I can only reply, helplessly, that I did not
make the advertising business; nobody made it; that is why
it is so absurd. Whether one regards the advertising business
as farce or as tragedy, one is convinced that the play is badly
made; there are no heroes and the villains have a way of turn-
ing into victims under one's eyes; none of them is consistently
bad, consistently sad or even consistently funny.

As I shall try to show in a later section entitled "The
Natural History of Advertising," the advertising business
just grew. It is the economic and cultural causes, the economic
and cultural consequences of this growth that I shall try to
describe in this book.

12

CHAPTER

1

THE BUSINESS NOBODY KNOWS

THE title of this chapter; was chosen, not so much to parody
the title of Mr. Bruce Barton's widely-read volume of New
Testament exegesis, as to suggest that, in the lack of serious
critical study, we really know very little about advertising:
how the phenomenon happened to achieve its uniquely huge
and grotesque dimensions in America; how it has affected our
individual and social psychology as a people; what its role
is likely to be in the present rapidly changing pattern of social
and economic forces.

The advertising business is quite literally the business no-
body knows; nobody, including, or perhaps more especially,
advertising men. As evidence of this general ignorance, one
has only to cite a few of the misapprehensions which have
confused the very few contemporary economists, sociologists
and publicists who have attempted to treat the subject.

Perhaps the chief of these misapprehensions is that of re-
garding advertising as merely the business of preparing and
placing advertisements in the various advertising media: the
daily and periodical press, the mails, the radio, motion picture,
car cards, posters, etc. The error here is that of mistaking a
function of the thing for the thing itself. It would be much
more accurate to say that our daily and periodical press, plus
the radio and other lesser media, are the advertising business.
The commercial press is supported primarily by advertising
roughly the ratio as between advertising income and sub-

13

scription and news-stand sales income averages about two to
one. It is quite natural, therefore, that the publishers of news-
papers and magazines should regard their enterprises as ad-
vertising businesses. As a matter of fact, every advertising
man knows that they do so regard them and so conduct them.
These publishers are business men, responsible to their stock-
holders, and their proper and necessary concern is to make a
maximum of profit out of these business properties. They do
this by using our major instruments of social communication,
whose free and disinterested functioning is embodied in the
concept of a democracy, to serve the profit interests of the
advertisers who employ and pay them. Within certain limits
they give their readers and listeners the sort of editorial
content which experience proves to be effective in building
circulations and audiences, these to be sold in turn at so much
a head to advertisers. The limits are that regardless of the
readers' or listeners' true interests, nothing can be given them
which seriously conflicts with the profit-interests of the ad-
vertisers, or of the vested industrial and financial powers
back of these; also nothing can be given them which seriously
conflicts with the use and wont, embodied in law and custom,
of the competitive capitalist economy and culture.

In defining the advertising business it must be remembered
also that newspapers and magazines use paper and ink: a huge
bulk of materials, a ramified complex of services by printers,
lithographers, photographers, etc. Radio uses other categories
of materials and services the whole art of radio was origi-
nally conceived of as a sales device to market radio transmit-
ters and receiving sets. All these services are necessary to adver-
tising and advertising is necessary to them. These are also the
advertising business. Surely it is only by examining this
business as a whole that we can expect to understand anything
about it.

The second misapprehension is that invidious moral value
judgments are useful in appraising the phenomena. Adver-

tising is merely an instrument of sales promotion. Good ad-
vertising is efficient advertising advertising which promotes
a maximum of sales for a minimum of expenditure. Bad ad-
vertising is inefficient advertising, advertising which accom-
plishes its purpose wastefully or not at all. All advertising is
obviously special pleading. Why should it be considered perti-
nent or useful to express surprise and indignation because
special pleading, whether in a court of law, or in the public
prints, is habitually disingenuous, and frequently unscrupu-
lous and deceptive? Yet liberal social critics, economists and
sociologists, have wasted much time complaining that adver-
tising has "elevated mendacity to the status of a profession."
The pressure of competition forces advertisers and the adver-
tising agencies who serve them to become more efficient; to
advertise more efficiently frequently means to advertise more
mendaciously. Do these liberal critics want advertising to be
less efficient? Do they want advertisers to observe standards
of ethics, morals and taste which would, under our existing
institutional setup, result either in depriving stockholders of
dividends, or in loading still heavier costs on the consumer?
There is, of course, a third alternative, which is neither
good advertising nor bad advertising, but no advertising. But
that is outside the present institutional setup. It should be ob-
vious that in the present (surplus economy) phase of Ameri-
can capitalism, advertising is an industry no less essential than
steel, coal, or electric power. If one defines advertising as the
total apparatus of American publishing and broadcasting, it
is in fact among the twelve greatest industries in the country.
It is, moreover, one of the most strategically placed indus-
tries. Realization of this fact should restrain us from loose
talk about "deflating the advertising business." How would
one go about organizing "public opinion" for such an enter-
prise when the instruments of social communication by which
public opinion must be shaped and organized are themselves
the advertising business?

15

As should be apparent from the foregoing, the writer has
only a qualified interest in "reforming" advertising. Obviously
it cannot be reformed without transforming the whole in-
stitutional context of our civilization. The bias of the writer
is frankly in favor of such a transformation. But the im-
mediate task in this book is one of description and analysis.
Although advertising is forever in the public's eye and in
its ear too, now that we have radio the average layman con-
fines himself either to applauding the tricks of the ad-man,
or to railing at what he considers to be more or less of a pub-
lic nuisance. In neither case does he bother to understand
what is being done to him, who is doing it, and why.

The typical view of an advertisement is that it is a selling
presentation of a product or service, to be judged as "good"
or "bad" depending upon whether the presentation is ac-
curate or inaccurate, fair or deceptive. But to an advertising
man, this seems a very shallow view of the matter.

Advertising has to do with the shaping of the economic,
social, moral and ethical patterns of the community into
serviceable conformity with the profit-making interests of
advertisers and of the advertising business. Advertising thus
becomes a body of doctrine. Veblen defined advertisements
as "doctrinal memoranda," and the phrase is none the less
precise because of its content of irony. It is particularly ap-
plicable to that steadily increasing proportion of advertising
classified as "inter-industrial advertising": that is to say, ad-
vertising competition between industries for the consumer's
dollar. What such advertising boils down to is special plead-
ing, directed at the consumer by vested property interests,
concerning the material, moral and spiritual content of the
Good Life. In this special pleading the editorial contents of
the daily and periodical press, and the sustaining programs of
the broadcasters, are called upon to do their bit, no less man-
fully, though less directly than the advertising columns or
the sponsor's sales talk. Such advertising, as Veblen pointed

16

out, is a lineal descendant of the "Propaganda of the Faith."
It is a less unified effort, and less efficient because of the con-
flicting pressure groups involved; also because of the disrup-
tive stresses of the underlying economic forces of our time.
Yet it is very similar in purpose and method.

An important point which the writer develops in detail in
later chapters is that advertising is an effect resulting from
the unfolding of the economic processes of modern capitalism,
but becomes in turn a cause of sequential economic and social
phenomena. The earlier causal chain is of course apparent.
Mass production necessitated mass distribution which ne-
cessitated mass literacy, mass communication and mass ad-
vertising. But the achieved result, mass advertising, becomes
in turn a generating cause of another sequence. Mass adver-
tising perverts the integrity of the editor-reader relationship
essential to the concept of a democracy. Advertising doctrine
always remembering that the separation of the editorial
and advertising contents of a modern publication is for the
most part formal rather than actual is a doctrine of material
emulation, keeping up with the Joneses, conspicuous waste.
Mass advertising plus, of course, the government mail subsidy,
makes possible the five-cent price for national weeklies, the
ten- to thirty-five-cent price for national monthlies. Because
of this low price and because of the large appropriations for
circulation-promotion made possible by advertising income,
the number of mass publications and the volume of their
circulation has hugely increased. These huge circulations are
maintained by editorial policies dictated by the requirements
of the advertisers. Such policies vary widely but have certain
elements in common. Articles, fiction, verse, etc., are con-
ceived of as "entertainment." This means that controversial
subjects are avoided. The contemporary social fact is not
adequately reported, interpreted, or criticized; in fact the
run of commercial magazines and newspapers are extraordi-
narily empty of social content. On the positive side, their con-

17

tent, whether fiction, articles or criticism, is definitely shaped
toward the promotion and fixation of mental and emotional
patterns which predispose the reader to an acceptance of the
advertiser's doctrinal message.

This secondary causal chain therefore runs as follows: Mass
advertising entails the perversion of the editor-reader rela-
tionship; it entails reader-exploitation, cultural malnutrition
and stultification.

This situation came to fruition during the period just be-
fore, during and after the war; a period of rapid technical,
economic and social change culminating in the depression of
1929. At precisely the moment in our history when we needed
a maximum of open-minded mobility in public opinion, we
found a maximum of inertia embodied in our instruments of
social communication. Since these have become advertising
businesses, and competition is the life of advertising, they have
a vested interest in maintaining and promoting the competi-
tive acquisitive economy and the competitive acquisitive social
psychology. Both are essential to advertising, but both are
becoming obsolete in the modern world. In contemporary
sociological writing we find only vague and passing reference
to this crucial fact, which is of incalculable influence in de-
termining the present and future movement of social forces
in America.

In later chapters the writer will be found dealing coinci-
dentally with advertising, propaganda and education. Con-
temporary liberal criticism tends to regard these as separate
categories, to be separately studied and evaluated. But in the
realm of contemporary fact, no such separation exists. All
three are instruments of rule. Our ruling class, representing
the vested interests of business and finance, has primary access
to and control over all these instruments. One supplements
the other and they are frequently used coordinately. Liberal
sociologists would attempt to set up the concept of education,
defined as a disinterested objective effort to release capacity,

It

as a contrasting opposite to propaganda and advertising. In
practice no such clear apposition obtains, or can obtain, as is
in fact acknowledged by some of our most distinguished
contemporary educators.

There is nothing unique, isolate or adventitious about the
contemporary phenomena of advertising. Your ad-man is
merely the particular kind of eccentric cog which the ma-
chinery of a competitive acquisitive society required at a par-
ticular moment of its evolution. He is, on the average, much
more intelligent than the average business man, much more
sophisticated, even much more socially minded. But in mov-
ing day after day the little cams and gears that he has to
move, he inevitably empties himself of human qualities. His
daily traffic in half-truths and outright deceptions is subtly
and cumulatively degrading. No man can give his days to
barbarous frivolity and live. And ad-men don't live. They
become dull, resigned, hopeless. Or they become daemonic
fantasts and sadists. They are, in a sense, the intellectuals,
the male hetserae of our American commercial culture. Mer-
ciful nature makes some of them into hale, pink-fleshed,
speech-making morons. Others become gray-faced cynics and
are burned out at forty. Some "unlearn hope" and jump out
of high windows. Others become extreme political and social
radicals, either secretly while they are in the business, or
openly, after they have left it.

This, then, is the advertising business. The present volume is
merely a reconnaissance study. In addition to wKat is indicated
by the foregoing, some technical material is included on the
organization and practices of the various branches of the
business. Some attempt is made to answer the questions: how
did it happen that America offered a uniquely favorable cul-
ture-bed for the development of the phenomena described?
What are the foreign equivalents of our American rule-by-
advertising? How will advertising be affected by the present
trend toward state capitalism, organized in the corporative

19

forms of fascism, and how will the social inertias nourished
and defended by advertising condition that trend?

The writer also attempts tentative measurements of the
mental levels of various sections of the American population,
using the criteria provided by our mass and class publications.
Advertising men are obliged to make such measurements as
a part of their business; they are frequently wrong, but since
their conclusions are the basis of more or less successful busi-
ness practice they are worthy of consideration.

The one conclusion which the writer offers in all serious-
ness is that the advertising business is in fact the Business
Nobody Knows. The trails marked out in this volume are
brief and crude. It is hoped that some of our contemporary
sociologists may be tempted to clear them a little further.
Although, of course, there is always the chance that the swift
movement of events may eliminate or rather transform that
particular social dilemma, making all such studies academic,
even archaic. In that case it might happen that ad-men
would be preserved chiefly as museum specimens, to an ap-
preciation of which this book might then serve as a moder-
ately useful guide.

Advertising has, of course, a very ancient history. But
since the modern American phenomenon represents not
merely a change in degree but a change in kind, the chrono-
logical tracing of its evolution would be only confusing. It
has seemed better first to survey the contemporary phenomena
in their totality and then present in a later chapter the
limited amount of historical data that seemed necessary and
pertinent.

20

CHAPTER

THE APPARATUS OF ADVERTISING

WHEN we come to describe and measure the apparatus of
advertising, some more or less arbitrary breakdown is neces-
sary. Let us therefore start with the advertising agency, which
is the hub of the advertising business proper, where all the
lines converge. We shall then draw concentric circles, repre-
senting increasingly remote but genuinely related institutions,
people and activities.

In Advertising Agency Compensation Professor James A.
Young, of the University of Chicago, estimates that in 1932
there were 2,000 recognized national and local advertising
agencies engaged in the preparation and placing of newspaper,
magazine, direct-by-mail, carcard, poster, radio and all mis-
cellaneous advertising. These 2,000 agencies served 16,573
advertisers. Advertisers served by agencies having recognition
by individual publishers only are excluded from this estimate.

Prof. Young estimates the 1930 volume of advertising
placed through 440 recognized agencies at $600,000,000. An
additional 370 agencies placed $37,000,000 in that year. The
trend during the post-war decade was steadily toward the
concentration of the business in the larger agencies with a
further concentration brought about by mergers of some
of these already large units.

In 1930 there were six agencies doing an annual business
of $20,000,000 or over, and fourteen with an annual volume
of from $5,000,000 to $20,000,000. A further indication of

21

the trend is contained in the figures showing the advertising
income of American Magazine, Colliers, Saturday Evening
Post, Delineator, Good Housekeeping, Ladies 9 Home Journal,
McCalls and Woman's Home Companion. In 1922, 57.8 per
cent of the combined advertising income of these publications
came from the ten leading agencies. In 1931 this proportion
had risen to 68.3 per cent.

A similar trend toward concentration in the sources of
advertising revenue is apparent. Advertisers spending between
$10,000 and $100,000 annually dropped from 43.8 per cent
of the total volume in 1921 to 21.1 per cent of the total
volume in 1930. Advertisers spending between $100,000 and
$1,000,000 annually increased from 51.3 per cent of the total
volume in 1921 to 55.9 per cent in 1930. Finally, advertisers
spending over a million a year increased their percentage of
the total volume from 4.9 per cent in 1921 to 23 per cent in
1930.

The agency employee, whether he writes advertising copy,
draws advertising pictures or is concerned with one of many
routine, mechanical and clerical processes of the agency traf-
fic, must be listed as an advertising person; he makes his
living directly out of the advertising business.

The manufacturer's or merchant's advertising staff is also
clearly to be listed as a part of the personnel of the advertising
business.

A publisher's representative, or "space salesman", is also
clearly an advertising man; so is the circulation promotion
manager and his staff his budget is an advertising budget.
But how about the editorial department of the newspaper or
magazine? Here we are on debatable ground. If the news-
paper or magazine is primarily an advertising business, since
most of its income is derived from advertisers, and all of its
activities, editorial and otherwise, are finally evaluated accord-
ing to the degree of their utility in making the publication
an effective and profitable advertising medium, then the total

22

taff of the publication is an advertising staff; they too make
their livings out of the advertising business.

Without attempting to settle the question, let us first con-
sider certain statistical trends which show clearly enough the
progressive transformation of our daily and periodical press
into advertising businesses.

In 1909, 63 per cent of newspaper income and 5 1.6 per cent
of magazine income was from advertising. By 1929 the pro-
portion of advertising income had moved sharply upward to
74.1 per cent for newspapers and 63.4 per cent for periodicals.
Approximately three-quarters of the newspaper's dollar and
two-thirds of the periodical's dollar came from advertisers.

To correspond with this trend we should expect to find a
certain re-orientation of the function of the newspaper and
periodical press, and that is precisely what we do find. The
reader is asked to follow a digression at this point, since it is
important to the general argument.

Increasingly over the past thirty years we find the news-
paper asserting its freedom in political terms. Coincidentally,
of course, it has come more and more under the hegemony of
business exercised through advertising contracts to be either
given or withheld. In 1900, 732 dailies acknowledged them-
selves to be "democratic" and 801, "republican." By 1930,
papers labeled "independent democrat" and "independent re-
publican" had increased fivefold, while papers pretending to
be "independent" politically jumped from 377 in 1900 to
792 in 1930, when such papers constituted the largest single
category. In commenting on this trend Messrs. Willey and
Rice remark, in Recent Social Trends:

This increase in claimed political independence may indicate that
the newspaper is becoming less important as an adjunct of the
political party, that it seeks greater editorial freedom, or that it
desires to include various political adherents within its circulation
and advertising clientele.

The italics are the writer's. What this statistical trend
would appear to show, especially when coupled with the co-
ordinate increase of the newspaper's dependence upon adver-
tising income, is that the newspapers have realistically adapted
themselves to the exigencies of a changing social and economic
situation. This holds almost equally true of the periodicals.
Politics as a means of government was definitely recessive
during this period, and public interest in politics correspond-
ingly declined. The powers of government were shifting to
business. Hence the press became more and more "free." It
freed itself from involvement with the nominal rulers, the
political parties, in order that it might be free to court the
patronage of the real rulers, the vested interests of business,
industry, finance; in return for this patronage, the press be-
came increasingly an instrument of rule operated in behalf
of business. The press, being itself a profit-motivated business
was in fact obliged to achieve this transition; to orient itself
to the emerging focus of power, and to become in fact though
not in name, an advertising business. In essence, what hap-
pened was that both major political parties had become, in
respect to the class interests which they represented, one
party, the party of business; the press, as an advertising
medium, tended to represent that party.

Taking 1909 to 1929 as representing the crucial period of
this transition we find that in 1909 the volume of newspaper
advertising was $149,000,000 and of periodical advertising
$54,000,000. By 1929 the figures were $792,000,000 for
newspaper advertising and $320,000,000 for periodical adver-
tising. Except for the movies, the automobile, and the radio,
no other major American industry has rivaled the swift
expansion of the advertising business.

We have then a combined total of $1,112,000,000 as the
contribution of newspaper and magazine advertisers to the
advertising "pot." In computing the total contents of this
pot we must duly add at least $75,000,000 for time on the

air bought by advertisers from commercial broadcasters. The
radio, since all its income is derived from advertisers, must
be rated as essentially an advertising business. We must add
$400,000,000 for direct-by-mail advertising, $75,000,000 for
outdoor advertising, $20,000,000 for street-car advertising,
$75,000,000 for business papers, and $25,000,000 for pre-
miums, programs, directories, etc. The foregoing are 1927
figures cited by Copeland in Recent Economic Changes. Ad-
vertising volume in all categories went up in 1928 and 1929
and radio volume continued to go up during the first three
years of the depression. Also in these figures no allowance is
made for radio talent bought and paid for by the advertiser,
and none for art and mechanical costs of printed advertising,
billed by the agency to the advertiser with a i5-per-cent com-
mission added. Hence Copeland's grand total of $1,782,-
000,000 for all advertising must be taken as a very conserva-
tive estimate of the peak volume of the business. Two billion
would probably be closer. As to the number of workers
engaged in the various branches of the business, detailed
estimates are difficult to get, chiefly because of the confusion
of categories.

The General Report on Occupations of the I5th Census
gives figures of 5,453 men and 400 women as the personnel of
advertising agencies, but under Advertising Agents and Other
Pursuits in the Trade the figures are 43,364 men and 5,656
women. Printing, publishing and engraving must be consid-
ered as in large part services of supply for the advertising
business as above defined, and the personnel of these trades,
including printers, compositors, linotypers, typesetters, elec-
trotypers, stereotypers, lithographers and engravers totals
269,030 men and 33,333 women. In 1927 printing, publish-
ing and allied industries ranked as the fifth industry in the
United States with a total volume of $2,094,000,000.

The question, who is or is not connected with the adver-
tising business is indeed baffling. Is the printer, who makes all

or most of his living out of the advertising business, an adver-
tising man? How about the engraver, the lithographer, the
matmaker, the makers and sellers of paper and ink all the
hordes of people who as producers, service technicians, sales-
men, clerks operate back of the lines as advertising's Service
of Supplies? Many of these people, especially the salesmen,
certainly think of themselves as advertising people. They are
members in good standing of Advertising Clubs. Toss a
chocolate eclair into the air at any Thursday noon luncheon
of the Advertising Club of Kenosha, Wisconsin, or Muncie,
Indiana, and the chances are three to one it will land on a
printer or on an engraver. They are there strictly on business,
of course, and their dues are carried as part of the firm's over-
head. But how they believe in advertising!

Spread the net a little more widely and all kinds of strange
fish flop and writhe in the meshes of advertising. The Alumni
Secretary of dear Old Siwash is he an advertising man? No?
Then why is he a member of the local advertising club? And
how about the football squad, their trainer, coach, waterboy,
cheer-leaders, etc. are they advertising men? Well, the team
advertises the college, and, by general agreement, is main-
tained chiefly for that purpose. Why, then, isn't the personnel
involved an advertising personnel?

Then there are the advertising departments of our numer-
ous university-sanctioned Schools of Business Administration.
Are these fellows advertising men or educators? Dr. Abraham
Flexner maintains that they are not educators, while prac-
tical agency heads insist with equal energy that they are not
advertising men. But they can't belong to nobody and the
writer's guess is that they must, however reluctantly, be
categoried as part of the personnel of the advertising business.

Hastening back to firm ground, we can agree that adver-
tising copy-writers employed by agencies or advertisers are
unmistakably advertising men. So are the fellows who sell
space in publications. But how about the staffs of the various

26

institutes, bureaus, etc., such as Good Housekeeping Insti-
tute, whose job is to test and pass on the products and ap-
pliances advertised in the publication? The raison d'etre of
such departments is that they nourish the confidence of the
reader and thus increase the value of the publication to the
advertiser. Are these fellows scientists, engineers or advertis-
ing men?

Without attempting to answer this embarrassing question,
let us go across the hall or upstairs to the editorial department
of a modern publication. The "travel editor" is busy comput-
ing the current and prospective lineage bought by various
steamship and railroad lines. On the result of this computa-
tion will depend whether next month she will praise the joys
of California's sun-kist climate or the more de luxe attrac-
tions of the Riviera. Is the young woman an editor, a literary
person or an advertising woman?

The fiction editor has on his desk a very suitable manu-
script. It has neither literary nor other distinction, but the
subject matter and treatment are excellent from a pragmatic
point of view. The story tells how a young man was nobody
and got nowhere until he bought some well-tailored clothes;
with the aid of these clothes and other items of conspicuous
waste, he established his social status and shrewdly used his
newly-won acquaintances to promote his business career. He
ends up as partner in the firm where he was formerly a de-
spised bookkeeper. Moral: it pays to wear smart clothes, even
if you have to go in debt to buy them. The story is in effect an
excellent institutional advertisement for the men's clothing
industry, and will be so regarded by present and prospective
clothing advertisers. Is its author a literary man or an adver-
tising man? Is the editor who chose this story, for the reasons
indicated above, an editor and critic or an advertising man?
The story will be illustrated by an artist who specializes in
his knowledge of styles in men's clothing. When he makes his
illustrations he will have before him as "scrap" the latest

catalogues of the clothing houses. Is he an artist, an illustrator
or an advertising man?

It may seem unkind to press the point, but we have barely
begun to list the peripheral personnel of the advertising busi-
ness. The electrician who repairs the neon signs on Broadway
is he an electrician or an advertising man? The truck driver
who delivers huge rolls of paper to the press rooms of the
newspapers where would he be, but for the advertising busi-
ness that keeps those presses busy dirtying that paper? And
the bargemen who floated that newsprint across the Hudson?
And the train crew that freighted it down from Maine? And
the loggers in the Maine woods that supply the pulp mills?
And the writers for the "pulps" who go to Maine for their
vacations?

It is not necessary to project this unbroken continuity into
the realm of fantasy. Both in respect to the number of per-
sons employed and the total value of manufactured products,
advertising is, or was in 1929, one of the twelve major indus-
tries of the country. We are living in a fantastic ad-man's
civilization, quite as truly as we are living in what historians
are pleased to call a machine age, and a very cursory examina-
tion of the underlying economic trends will be sufficient to
show how we got there.

The essential dynamic of course is the emergence of our
"surplus economy" predicament, generated by the applica-
tion of our highly developed technology to production for
profit. Advertising played a more or less functional though
barbaric and wasteful role during the whole expansionist era
of American capitalism. The obsolescence, the reductio ad ab-
surdum of advertising is betrayed by the exaggerations, the
grotesqueries, which accompanied its period of greatest ex-
pansion during the postwar decade. Like many another social
institution, it flowered most impressively at the very moment
when its roots had been cut by the shift of the underlying
economic forces.

28

Between 1870 and 1930 several millions of people were
squeezed out of production. Where did they go? The statis-
tical evidence is plain. In 1870 about 75 per cent of the gain-
fully employed people of the United States were engaged in
the production of physical goods in agriculture, mining, man-
ufacture and construction. In 1930 only about 50 per cent
of the labor supply was so required. In 1870, ten per cent of
the employed population was engaged in transportation and
distribution. In 1930, 20 per cent was engaged in transporta-
tion and distribution. What caused this shift was chiefly the
increase in man-hour productivity made possible by improve-
ments in machine technology and in the technique of man-
agement. The chapter on "Trends in Economic Organization"
by Edwin F. Gay and Leo Wolman in Recent Social Trends
documents this increase as follows:

The combined physical production of agriculture and of the
manufacturing, mining and construction industries increased 34
per cent from 1922 to 1929. . . . The advance in output was
steady throughout the period and even in the recession years, 1924
and 1927, the decline was surprisingly small. Much more impor-
tant, however, is the comparison between the rate of increase in
physical output in the prewar and postwar periods. Per capita out-
put, reflecting retardation in the rate of population growth, as
well as the rise in production, advanced twice as fast in the later
years as in the earlier, as is indicated by the average annual rate of
increase.

Volume of Per capita

Period production Population production

per cent per cent per cent

1901-1913 +3' 1 H" 2 ' 1 H" 1 - 1

1922-1929 +3.8 +1.4 +2.4

Although real wage levels rose slightly during this period
they did not rise proportionately to the increase in man-hour
productivity, the increase in profits, the increase in plant in-

29

vestment, and the increase in capital claims upon the product
of industry. The result of these conflicting trends was to
place an increasing burden upon the machinery of selling.
This is reflected in the rising curve of sales overhead, the
increase in small loan credit and installment selling and the
meteoric rise of advertising expenditure during the post-war
period. According to the estimate of Robert Lynd in Recent
Social Trends the total volume of retail installment sales in
1910 was probably under a billion dollars. By 1929 it had
increased to seven billion dollars.

Undoubtedly this six-billion-dollar shot in the arm post-
poned the crisis, intensified its severity and contributed im-
portantly to the Happy Days of advertising during the New
Era. After the crash it was of course the ad-men who were
urged to put Humpty-Dumpty back on the wall. They tried
manfully, but since it is impossible to advertise a defunct
buying power back into existence, they didn't succeed. And
now, after four years of depression it would appear that the
ad-man has learned nothing and forgotten nothing.

That two-billion-dollar advertising budget is a lot of
money. In 1929 it represented about two per cent of the
national income for that year, or $15 per capita. It might
well be alleged that the bill was high, would have been high
even for a competently administered service of information.
And, as already indicated, advertising is scarcely that. What
that two billion represented, what the present billion and a
half advertising volume represents, is in considerable part the
tax which business levies on the consumer to support the
machinery of its super-government the daily and periodical
press, the radio, the apparatus of advertising as we have
described it. By this super-government the economic, social,
ethical and cultural patterns of the population are shaped
and controlled into serviceable conformity to the profit -
motivated interests of business.

Our notoriously extravagant official government is really

30

much more modest, considering that it gives us in return
such tangible values as roads, sewers, water, schools, police
and fire departments, and such grandiose luxuries as the
army and navy. The combined tax bill of the nation, Federal,
State, and local, amounted to only $10,077,000,000 in 1930
or roughly about $75 per capita.

It will be argued, of course, that even if advertising is
thrown out of court as a service of information, since that is
neither its intent nor its effect, nevertheless this two-billion-
dollar industry does net us something. But for advertising,
we should not be able to enjoy the radio free, or read the
Saturday Evening Post at five cents a copy, or Mr. Hearst's
American Weekly, which is thrown in free with his Sunday
newspapers. In other words, it will be argued that advertising
is justifiable as an indirect subsidy of our daily and periodical
press and the radio; that for this two billion dollars, which has
to be charged ultimately to the consumer, we get a tremen-
dous quantity of news, information, criticism, culture, pretty
pictures, education and entertainment. We do, indeed, and
as taxpayers we value this contribution to our welfare so
highly that our Post Office Department also heavily sub-
sidizes our daily and periodical press. Also we pay the Federal
Radio Commission's annual million-dollar budget, consumed
chiefly in adjusting commercial dog-fights over wave lengths.

But the actual quality and usefulness of what we get is
another matter. In exchange for these official and unof-
ficial subsidies we get a daily and periodical press which has
practically ceased to function as a creative instrument of
democratic government: which does, however, function ef-
fectively as an instrument of obscuration, suppression and
cultural stultification, used by business in behalf of business;
which levels all cultural values to the common denominator
of emulative acquisition and social snobbism, which draws its
daily and weekly millions to feast on the still-born work of
hamstrung reporters, escape- formula fictioneers, and slick-

empty artists; which, having stupefied its readers with this
sour-sweet stew of nothingness, can be counted on to be
faithful to them in all issues which don't particularly matter
and to betray them systematically and thoroughly whenever
their interests run counter to the vested interests of business.

In this indictment it is not denied that we have in
America many honest newspapers and honest magazines,
honest editors, honest reporters and honest advertising men.
They are honest and blameless within the limits of the pattern
prescribed for them by the economic determinants of the in-
stitutions which they serve. Some of them even struggle at
great peril and sacrifice to break through and transcend these
limits. It is inevitable that they should do so, since not only
their readers but themselves are violated by the compulsions
of the system in which both are caught.

But the system itself is substantially as described. The
American apparatus of advertising is something unique in
history and unique in the modern world; unique, fantastic
and fragile. One needs but little knowledge of history, or of
the movement of contemporary economic and social forces,
to know that it can't last. It is like a grotesque, smirking
gargoyle set at the very top of America's sky-scraping ad-
venture in acquisition ad infinitum. The tower is tottering,
but it probably will be some time before it falls. And so long
as the tower stands the gargoyle will remain there to mock us.

The gargoyle's mouth is a loud speaker, powered by the
vested interest of a two-billion-dollar industry, and back of
that the vested interests of business as a whole, of industry,
of finance. It is never silent, it drowns out all other voices,
and it suffers no rebuke, for is it not the Voice of America?
That is its claim and to a degree it is a just claim. For at least
two generations of Americans the generations that grew up
during the war and after have listened to that voice as to
an oracle. It has taught them how to live, what things to be
afraid of, what to be proud of, how to be beautiful, how to

3*

be loved, how to be envied, how to be successful. In the most
tactful manner, and without offending either the law or the
moralities, it has discussed the most intimate facts of life. It
has counselled with equal gravity the virtue of thrift and the
virtue of spending. It has uttered the most beautiful senti-
ments concerning the American Home, the Glory of Mother-
hood, the little rosebud fingers that clutch at our heartstrings,
the many things that must be done, and the many, many
things that must be bought, so that the little ones may have
their chance. It has spoken, too, of the mystery of death, and
the conspicuous reverence to be duly bought and paid for
when Father passes away.

So that today, when one hears a good American speak, it
is almost like listening to the Oracle herself. One hears the
same rasping, over-amplified, whisky-contralto voice, ex-
pressing the same ideas, declaring allegiance to the same values.

So that when somebody like the writer rises to say that the
Oracle is a cheat and a lie: that he himself was the oracle, for
it was he who cooed and cajoled and bellowed into the micro-
phone off stage; that he did it for money and that all the
other priests of the Advertising Oracle were and are similarly
motivated: that the Gargoyle-oracle never under any cir-
cumstances tells the truth, the whole truth and nothing but
the truth, for the truth is not in her: that she corrupts every-
thing she touches art, letters, science, workmanship, love,
honor, manhood. . . .

Why, then, your American is not in the least abashed. He
knows the answer. It was pretty smart, wasn't it? It certainly
does pay to advertise! You know, I've always thought I'd
like to write advertisements! How does one get into the Ad-
vertising Business?

33

CHAPTER

HOW IT WORKS:

The Endless Chain of Salesmanship

THE apparatus of advertising, conceived of as the total ap-
paratus of daily and periodical publishing, the radio, and, in
somewhat different quality and degree, the movie and formal
education, is ramified interlocking and collusive, but not
unified. This distinction must be kept carefully in mind.
Most of the residual and fortuitous mercies and benefits that
the public at large derives from the system are traceable to
the fact that the apparatus of advertising is not unified; it
exhibits all the typical conflicts of competitive business under
capitalism plus certain strains and stresses peculiar to itself.

With the system operating at the theoretical maximum of
its efficiency, the sucker, that is to say the consumer, would
never get a break. In practice, of course, he gets a good many
breaks: a percentage of excellent and reasonably priced prod-
ucts, a somewhat higher percentage of unbiased news, a still
higher percentage of good entertainment both on the air and
in the daily and periodical press. He even gets a modicum of
genuine and salutary education more, or less, depending on
his ability to separate the wheat from the chaff.

No system is perfect and the apparatus of advertising suf-
fers not merely from human frailty and fallibility but from
the lag, leak, and friction inherent in its design.

The apparatus of advertising is designed to sell products
for the advertiser, and to condition the reflexes of the indi-
vidual and group mind favorably with respect to the interests

34

of the advertiser. The desired end result of the operation of
the apparatus is a maximum of profitable sales in the mass or
class market at which the advertising effort is directed.

But the apparatus itself is made up of a series of selling
operations as between the constituent parts of the system.
Each of these parts is manned by rugged individuals, all bar-
gaining sharply, not merely for their respective organizations
but for themselves. In attempting to trace this endless chain
of selling one wonders where to begin. Perhaps the advertising
agency is as good a starting point as any.

THE ADVERTISING AGENCY.

The advertising agent was originally a space broker dealing
in the white space that newspapers and periodicals had for
sale. He bought space wholesale from the publishers as cheaply
as possible and retailed it for as much as he could get from
advertisers. In the early days he frequently made a handsome
profit so handsome that the more powerful publishers at-
tempted to stabilize the system by appointing recognized
agents and granting them a commission on such space as they
sold to advertisers. The amount of the commission varied.
For the compensation they delivered a service consisting of
selling, credit and collection. The advertiser planned and
wrote his own advertisements and had them set up and
plated; he did his own research, merchandising, and so forth.

But more and more the agent tended to take over these
functions. He dealt with many advertisers and hence was in
an excellent position to become a clearing house of experience.
From a seller of white space he became a producer of adver-
tising. In a comparatively short period of years the larger
national advertisers were placing their advertising through
agents whose functions were the following: planning and
preparing the advertisement in consultation with the sales or
advertising manager of the advertiser; attending to all de-

35

tails of art purchase, mechanical production, etc.; selection
of publication media in which the advertising campaign
would appear; checking the insertions in these media. "Re-
search," "Merchandizing," etc., were later functions of the
agency, which in the larger agencies today are handled by
well-established departments.

The advertising agency is thus in the somewhat ambiguous
position of being responsible to the advertiser whom he is
serving but being paid by the advertising, publication or
other advertising medium, his commission being based on the
volume of the advertiser's expenditure. Objection to this
commission method of agency compensation has been chronic
for years. There are today a few relatively small agencies
that operate on a service fee basis. But the commission method
of compensation has persisted and is a factor in the endless
chain of selling that links the whole advertising apparatus.

Before the agent is entitled to receive commissions from
the various advertising media magazines, newspapers, radio
broadcasters, carcard and outdoor advertising companies
he must first be "recognized." To secure recognition he there-
fore presents to each of these media groups, which maintain
appropriate trade committees for this purpose, evidence that
he is financially responsible and controls the placing of a cer-
tain minimum of advertising business. The first selling job
is therefore that of the agent in "selling" his competence and
responsibility to the organized media.

When recognition is once granted, however, the agent
steps into the buyer's position in respect to the media. His
duty is then to his clients, the advertisers. In return for the
commission paid by the media which has been more or less
stabilized at 1 5 per cent less a two per cent discount for cash,
which is passed on to the client, the agent is expected to pre-
pare effective advertising, properly co-ordinated with manu-
facturing and sales tactics, and place it in the media most
effective for the purpose.

Walk into the lobby of any large advertising agency and
you will see about a dozen bright young men with brief cases
waiting to see agency account executives or media department
heads. They are space salesmen. The brief cases contain lav-
ishly printed and illustrated promotion booklets which serve
as reference texts for the salesmen. Many thousands of dol-
lars go into the compilation of the data printed in one of
these booklets. In it the publication's advertising manager
proves that his "book" has so many subscribers and is bought
at newsstands by so many people, as attested by the impartial
Audit Bureau of Circulations. These readers are concentrated
in such and such areas. They represent an average annual unit
buying power of so much as evidenced by the property
ownership of houses, automobiles, etc., etc. Their devotion to
the publication is evidenced by such and such a turnover of
subscribers and such and such a curve of circulation increase.
Their confidence and response to advertising placed in the
publication is evidenced by the success of advertisers A, B
and C, whose campaigns last year proved that advertising in
the Universal Weekly brings inquiries for only so much per
inquiry; furthermore such and such a percentage of these
inquiries were materialized into sales. The Universal Weekly
also exercises an important influence upon dealers. The broad-
side reproducing his campaign with which advertiser A cir-
cularized the trade, resulted in stocking so and so many new
dealers. The advertising department of the Universal Weekly
also co-operates earnestly with advertisers; in fact staff rep-
resentatives of the publication delivered so and so many of
these broadsides, and are even responsible for the addition
to the advertiser's list of so and so many new outlets.

The editorial department of the Universal Weekly is also
warmly co-operative. During the year 1932 the Universal
Weekly applied the editorial pulmotor to its readers' flagging
will-to-buy with measurable success. Note also the "construc-
tive" quality of the articles printed in the Universal Weekly,

37

that it gives also abundant quality in its fiction did it not
pay Pete Muldoon the highest price ever paid a fictioneer for
a serial?

These promotion booklets constitute an important and
greatly neglected source of economic and sociological data.
Moreover, some of them are honest from start to finish. They
had better be, on the whole. The agency's space buyer is
hardboiled. He sees all the promotion booklets. Moreover, he
has access to the advertising and sales records of a variety of
clients. He can and does construct his own private pie charts;
he can and occasionally does send his own crew of college-
bred doorbell ringers into the field to find out what sort of
people read what. On the basis of this calculus he says yes
or no to the publisher's representative. . . . Well, not quite
that. The publisher's representative has also seen the adver-
tiser's advertising manager. And the publisher himself played
golf last week with the Chairman of the Advertiser's Board.
And the wife of the publisher's advertising manager gave a
tea yesterday to the wife of the agency's vice-president who
would like to get into the Colony Club. Also, the space sales-
man and the agency's space buyer are both enthusiastic mem-
bers of the Zeta chapter of Epsilon Sigma Rho remember
that time we smuggled Prexy's prize pig into the choir loft?

There are certain other considerations. Agencies select
media subject to the approval of the client. But publishers'
representatives are also in a position to recommend agencies
to manufacturers who are about to make their debut as ad-
vertisers or to regular advertisers who are thinking of chang-
ing agencies. Also agency space buyers sometimes change
jobs. They may go to other agencies or become space sales-
men themselves. And space salesmen frequently graduate
into agency account executives.

What with one thing and another the agency space buyer
is likely to say yes and no until all the data of his calculus
is in hand.

38

It is necessary to sketch this background of intrigue be-
cause it is unquestionably a factor in the traffic of advertising
where the stakes are large and a decision one way or another
can readily be justified on entirely ethical grounds. It is a
minor factor. Curiously enough there is probably less of it in
the advertising business than in most other businesses; much
less, for instance than in the movie industry, or in the field
of investment banking. It is indeed puzzling that the ad-man,,
whose stock-in-trade in his relations with the public, is pretty
much bunk, should exhibit, in the internal traffic of the busi-
ness, a relatively high standard of personal integrity. Yet the
writer is convinced that this is so, and in later chapters will
offer tentative explanations why this should be so.

The agency-publication-advertiser relation is of course
only one loop of the endless chain of selling. To complete the
circuit in detail would scarcely be useful at this point. The
major sequences may be summarized briefly as follows:

SERVICES OF SUPPLY.

The raw material of advertising consists of ink, paper,
paint, photographic materials and talk. The techniques in-
volved are too numerous to list, especially since new tech-
niques are constantly emerging. In the lobby of the agency
swapping cigarettes and gossip with the space salesmen are
regularly to be seen the salesmen representing advertising's
services of supply. They are all there in person or represented
by their salesmen. The printer, the lithographer, the photog-
rapher, the carcard and outdoor advertising companies, the
direct-by-mail house, which is a printing house with much of
the production personnel and equipment -of the agency; the
advertising "novelty" house, a "public relations" expert, a
couple of broadcasting companies and three specimens of
radio talent. Also the de luxe young woman who serves as go-
between in the testimonial racket; also half a dozen people

39

of both sexes who are looking for jobs. They have heard that
the agency has just captured the Primrose Cheese account.

All told it makes quite a mob. The reception clerk is either
gray-haired and dignified, or young, pretty and amiable. She
is busy continuously on the telephone, glibly translating the
account executive's "Nothing doing" into "Mr. Blotz is so
sorry. Couldn't you come tomorrow at about this time?"
Eventually most of these salesmen are seen by somebody. The
agency is in the selling business too and <an't afford to up-
stage anybody. While they are waiting they improve their
time by selling each other. The printer sells the direct-by-mail
house executive; the engraver sells the printer; the lithog-
rapher sells the outdoor advertising representative; the radio
talent sells the broadcaster. Only the testimonial racketeer
remains uninterested. Deciding that there isn't a profitable
date in a carload of these people, she gives it up and goes
home.

INTRA-MURAL SELLING.

It must be understood that an advertising agency is a
loose aggregation of rugged individuals each of whom is very
busy carving out his or her professional career. This occa-
sions more or less continuous conflict and confusion. The
technique of combat is salesmanship. The movement is the
circular movement of the dance, with alternating tempos of
dreamy waltz and frantic fox-trot. There is much cutting-in
and swapping of partners. Everybody is busy selling every-
body else; this entails much weaving from desk to desk;
many prolonged luncheon conferences; many convivial mid-
night parties in Bronxville, Great Neck and Montclair. The
mulberry bush around which this dance revolves is known
in the trade jargon as the Billing, that is to say, the total
volume of advertising on which the agency gets commissions.
Everybody knows the amount of the commission and every-

40

body knows or can guess approximately the amount of the
Billing. Hence everybody is constantly doing mental cal-
culations in which the opposing factors are "How much do I
do?" and "How much am I paid?" The answer never comes
out right for anybody. The copy-writer notes that he writes
all the copy on three accounts the total annual billing on
which averages say a million dollars. Fifteen per cent of a
million dollars is $150,000. The copy-writer's salary is $5,000
and this year no bonus was paid at Christmas time. The dis-
crepancy is obvious. The copy-writer considers that all the
other processes of the agency, such as art production for which
a separate added commission is charged, media selection,
client contact, new business getting, forwarding, billing and
other routine tasks, are just as much overhead and that there
is too damned much of it; also too damned much profit
going into the salaries and dividends received by the heads of
the agency. All the other members of the "creative" staff
entertain similar views differing only in the focus of the
particular grievance; whereas the lowly clerical and mechan-
ical workers are convinced that the agency wouldn't get
paid unless the advertisements got into the newspapers and
magazines. They too have their grievances. The way out for
all these people is salesmanship. Hence everybody sells every-
body else; the copy writer and the art director sell the ac-
count executives on the relative importance of copy versus
art or art versus copy; the research director sends memoranda
up to the top pointing out that it is impossible to sell shoes
without an adequate economic and anatomical study of feet;
the new-business-getter inquires with some acerbity, who
brought this account into the house?

Observing this disorder in the ranks, the heads of the
agency are puzzled and heartsick. They work hard yes,
many of them do work preposterously hard. Few of them
make large fortunes out of the agency business directly. They
give more or less secure employment to hundreds of people.

And in return they get an amount of grouching, chiseling
and intrigue that is positively appalling.

The dance around the mulberry bush grows dreamier and
dreamier, or wilder and wilder. Since the generated energy is
centrifugal in nature, it happens at more or less regular in-
tervals that one of the dancers furtively leaves the floor and
runs across the street with a sprig of the mulberry bush in
his teeth. Panic ensues. A chosen few of the apostate's inti-
mates follow their leader across the street. If the mulberry
sprig roots and flowers, a new agency is established, the music
strikes up, and a new dance begins around the new mulberry
bush.

Meanwhile, in the parent agency a period of stricter dis-
cipline is inaugurated. Disaffected staff members are scared
or flattered back into line. New management devices are in-
troduced, which have as their objective an improved agency
morale. They are selling devices primarily. The staff is sold
on the integrity and fairness of the directing heads; they are
sold on the honor and dignity of the advertising profession;
they are assured that the way to the top is always open; that
copy writers, junior executives, etc., who work hard and
keep their eyes off the clock will be given higher responsibili-
ties, with commensurate increases in salary. The virtues of
the ad-man are industry, alertness and loyalty, and the greatest
of these is loyalty. On the anniversary of his employment
with the agency each employee finds on his desk a white
rose. All are urged to take a greater interest in the business.
Monday morning staff conferences are instituted. A frequent
subject of discussion at such conferences is the obligation,
falling on every ad-man, to believe in what he is selling. How
can he sell the public until he has first sold himself? This
would seem a somewhat harsh requirement, but the reader
is asked to believe that a percentage of ad-men fulfill it quite
literally. By a process of self -hypnosis they become deliriously

4*

enthusiastic about whatever they are obliged to sell at the
moment.

Their homes are museums of advertised toothpastes, soaps,
antiseptics and gadgets. From themselves, their wives and
their children, they exact the last full measure of devotion.
They are alternately constipated with new condiments and
purged with new laxatives, while their lives are forever being
complicated with new gadgets.

Since accounts change hands frequently, a certain open-
mindedness of judgment, and a certain emotional flexibility
are parts of the necessary equipment of the ad-man. He must
be prepared at a moment's notice to forswear toothpaste A
and announce undying devotion to toothpaste B; to rip out
a whole line of bathroom equipment and install a new line;
to turn in his McKinley Six for a Hoover Eight, whether he
can afford it or not. His ability to do all these things without
any outward evidence of insincerity is little short of mirac-
ulous.

The ad -man is indeed a kind of Candide. His world is the
best of all possible worlds, as the Russians say, every change
is good, even for the worse. For instance, he may work for a
small agency and passionately proclaim the efficiency of the
smaller service organization as against that of the half-dozen
mammoths of the business. But let his agency be merged with
one of these mammoths and he will make speech at the en-
suing convention of the joined staffs, in which he declares
with tears in his eyes that this marriage was made in heaven.
If, as sometimes happens, the merger was in fact a shotgun
marriage consummated more or less at the behest of the
sheriff, his fervor will be heightened only by this circum-
stance, which he will stoutly deny to all and sundry. He is
not consciously lying. He literally believes what he is saying.
His is indeed the faith that passes understanding.

In puzzling over such phenomena, it has occurred to the
writer that there is something feminine about the makeup of

43

your died-in-the-wool ad-man. This is probably an acquired
characteristic, a sort of industrial hazard, or occupational
disease peculiar to the business. The point will become more
clear when it is remembered that the advertising agency is
the scene of frequent accouchements this is indeed the busi-
ness-as-usual of the agency. Your ad-man is continuously
either enceinte with big ideas, or nursing their infant help-
lessness. In this delicate condition he can scarcely be held
intellectually or morally responsible for his opinions and
acts. Behind him is the whole pressure of the capitalist or-
ganism, which must sell or perish.

Hence the ad-man's morning sickness, his tell-tale fits of
dizziness after lunch, his periods of lachrymose sentimentality,
his sleepless vigils after hours, his indifference to considerations
of elementary logic the charming hysteria, in general, of
his high-strung temperament. Hence his trepidation as he
approaches the ultimate ordeal to be described in the next
chapter the Presentation to the Client.

44

CHAPTER

PRIMROSE CHEESE:

An Advertising Accouchement

i . PRELUDE

FROM his window close to the top of one of the minor sky-
scrapers of the Grand Central district, Eddie Butts, for two
months now, has been watching the spectral towers of Radio
City climb into the western sky.

Eddie Butts sighs. It is after hours, and Eddie is tired. The
sigh flies out the window, wreathes itself jocosely around the
topmost tower, and returns as an ironic, incomprehensible
whisper in Eddie's ear.

Eddie Butts shakes his head like a blind horse troubled by
flies. He must get down to business. He must get out his
work-sheet for the next day. Eddie turns to the dictaphone.

"Follow Schmalz on XYZ schedule stop Have Chapin phone
Universal on LHJ extension stop Call up Hank Prentice
stop Ask him how the hell he is stop Follow Chris on revises
BDB layouts stop Call Gene at the Club [Gene is getting
drunk with a client tonight strictly in line of duty, and it is
standard practice to wake him up at noon of the next day]
Revise plan for Primrose Cheese stop Lather Lulu a little
stop [Lulu is the radio prima donna who got miffed at the
last Cheery Oats broadcast] Organize Vita-pep research stop
Follow Mac on Spermentine publicity stop Tell him to damn
well watch his step stop Follow stop Follow stop err Stop."

A telephone is ringing persistently at the other end of the

45

floor. Probably nothing important some girl friend calling
one of the boys in the checking room. But you can never tell.
Eddie's sense of duty is strong. He decides not to take a
chance.

"Hello . . . Hello . . . Who? Oh, hello, Bob. This is
Eddie. What's the matter? Are you in trouble? . . . Oh, so
I'm in trouble am I? . . . Go on, you're drunk . . . What's
that? Sure, that's right. We're all ready to shoot. Old Him-
melschlussel himself will be on here from Racine, day after
tomorrow, and we give him the works, see? What? Oh,
swell. Swell slant. Swell art. Thought I told you about it.
Cheese and beer, cheese and cigarettes. Cheese for dessert.
The continental idea, you know. Put cheese on the map.
Himmelschlussel? No, I've never met him. What? Who says
so? Who's Oscar? Yes? Well, is he sure about that? What?
Say, how soon can you get over here? Sure, bring Oscar.
Step on it. I'll wait for you."

Eddie Butts' shoulders sag slightly as he stumbles along
the half-lit corridor back to his office. This might be just a
space salesman's wise crack. On the other hand, it might be
a real one another fire alarm. In which case

Eddie went to the bookcase and took down the three
elaborately bound volumes that represented the agency's sub-
mission on the Primrose Cheese account.

Vol. I. Section i. Market analysis, plan, and consumer,
copy, (the layouts are already tacked up on the wall in the
conference room) Section 2. Report of the domestic science
Bureau. Section 3. Merchandizing plan, trade copy, dealer
helps.

Vol. II. Report of the Research department.

Volume III. Media analysis and estimates. (This is an over-
size volume composed of charts and hand-lettered captions)

For the layman, a word of explanation is perhaps required
at this point. The submission as listed above involves an in-
vestment by the agency of approximately $10,000. It is a

gambling investment, even though in this instance the client
has signed a contract appointing the XYZ company as his
advertising agent, and certain frail safeguards to the agent
are embodied in this contract. It is a gambling investment
because all this work has been done subject to the client's
approval, and most of it be paid for only when and if the
client o.k's the campaign and the advertising begins to appear.

In some cases such presentations are sheerly speculative,
since they are made before the agent is appointed, as a means
of selling the client and securing the account. Such specula-
tive selling by the agency is frowned upon by the organized
profession and is prohibited in the NRA agency code of fair
competition. There are, of course, many ways of evading this
prohibition, and since the agency field is highly competitive,
such evasions will probably continue, much as in the past.

It may be asked: why this extraordinary and costly elab-
orateness of selling? The explanation resides chiefly in the
commission method of compensation. To the client that 15%
commission looks like a lot of money is a lot of money when
applied to a total annual expenditure by the client of, say,
$12,000,000 for advertising a single brand of cigarette.

The economic logic of the situation induces two opposing
points of view. From the agency's point of view, the client
is the squirming, recalcitrant fly in the otherwise pure oint-
ment of that 15% commission. All clients are unreasonable
in theory and frequently so in fact. In justice to the agency
it should be said that the majority of reputable agencies strive
earnestly to earn their commissions. They work hard and
even in the best of all possible worlds they make big money
only by a lucky break, to be discounted by a succession of
bad breaks next year. But the client either doesn't know this
or doesn't care. On the principle of caveat emptor, the client
has to be shown.

To put it crudely, the agent, from the advertiser's point
of view, is a bunk-shooter, a hi-jacker, with whom he is

47

obliged to deal merely because he has to pay that 15% com-
mission anyway. In its relations to clients, the agency may be
neither a bunk-shooter nor a hi- j acker, but it is guilty as
charged until it proves itself innocent. When possible the
client forces the agency to split the commission; or the ad-
vertiser may finance his own "house agency." There are argu-
ments against both these devices. When they seem plausible,
recourse is had to other forms of chiseling. The agency is
perhaps asked to pay the salary of the client's advertising or
sales manager. In any event the client insists on "service" and
lots of it. He demands free research and merchandizing serv-
ice, for which the agency would like to charge, and some-
times does charge an additional fee. He insists on dealing with
the principals of the agency, whether his account is large or
small, and irrespective of the competence of the staff workers
assigned to the account. The advertising manager expects the
agency's art department to design his Christmas cards and
forget to bill him. The advertisers' statistician expects the
agency's copy department to find a publisher for the verse
of the Wunkerkind spawned by his sister-in-law. When the
advertiser's advertising manager, or sales manager, or vice
president of the Company, their wives, cousins, etc., come to
New York, they are duly entertained in more or less Baby-
lonian fashion, depending upon their estimated importance,
and their previously ascertained habits and tastes. The bill for
this entertainment is duly applied to the agency's overhead
on that particular account.

But the necessitated elements of conspicuous waste are most
apparent in the Presentation to the Client which our friend
Eddie Butts, in the nocturnal solitude of his skyscraper eyrie,
is now somewhat morosely examining.

The service embodied in that presentation must look as if
it were worth at least twice what the client is asked to pay
for it, as determined by 15% of the net recommended ex-
penditure for publication, radio, car-card, poster, direct, and

other miscellaneous advertising. In this respect it is like the
presentation of any advertised product to the consumer. The
jar of cold cream worth 8 cents must look as if it were worth
the $2.00 that is charged for it. The cheap car must look like
an expensive car. The $1.98 dress must look like a million
dollars. All this is what is known as "psychological" selling,
and the principle operates in unbroken continuity through
the whole fabric of the advertising business.

Eddie Butts conducts his examination of the agency's
highly styled and psychologized product from back to front.
The client, when the presentation is made to him, will pro-
ceed similarly, since the nub of the argument lies in the rec-
ommended net expenditure, a figure which appears incon-
spicuously at the end of Volume III.

In this case, the figure is only moderate about $500,000
and as Eddie Butts, reading from right to left, weaves
through the maze of charts, tables, graphs, copy and mer-
chandizing these, etc., etc., he reflects ruefully that this pre-
sentation not only looks like a million dollars, but as a mat-
ter of fact, it has already cost the agency a good deal more
than it should have cost.

There has been a lot of grief on this account. In the be-
ginning it dropped into the house more or less out of the
blue. Old Hanson came back from a trip tkrough the Middle
West with the contract in his pocket. Everybody was con-
siderably surprised, since Hanson's function in the agency
had come to be regarded as almost wholly ornamental. A
rather handsome, gray-haired, middle-aged person, his ap-
pearance and manner suggested extreme probity, conserva-
tism, and a certain wise and sophisticated benignity. Copy
writers, art directors and other "creative" workers occasion-
ally testified to each other that Hanson was stupid, and pro-
duced more or less convincing evidence to this effect. But the
heads of the agency, being a shade more sophisticated than
either Hanson or his critics, were aware that certain varieties

49

of handsomely packaged stupidity are not without their uses
in the advertising business. So that Hanson's position was
secure.

But he certainly had pulled a boner on this account. Eddie
recalled the preliminary conference called to consider the
problem of Primrose Cheese and to devise appropriate solu-
tions.

The stenographer's record listed as among those present
Hanson, Butts, (Eddie was the group director having super-,
visory responsibility for the account) McNear, the art direc-
tor and Appleton, his young assistant; Blashfield, the bril-
liant copy-art-plan man, the outstanding advertising genius
of the Kidd, Kirby & Dougherty Agency; Shean, the copy
man, whose strictly disinterested facility made him a useful
understudy for Blashfield and others; Mrs. Betts, the head of
the Domestic Science Bureau, a rather grandiose, gray-haired
personality, full of sex antagonism and quite without a sense
of humor; Harmsworth and Billings, the last-named being
merely a couple of obscure copy hacks.

The day previous to the conference, all these people had
received, along with notice of their mobilization, a sample
of Primrose Cheese, with strict injunction to eat it that eve-
ning. It was a large sample, and Eddie recalled that some of
the conferees looked a little the worse for wear that morning.

In opening the meeting, Eddie made the usual preliminary
pep talk, duly deposited the problem on the long mahogany
table, and called for solutions.

Mr. Hanson: Since I am more or less responsible for bring-
ing this account into the house, perhaps I should tell you
some of the circumstances. Mr. Outerbridge, the advertising
manager of the Primrose Cheese Company, is a college class-
mate of mine, and it is through him that the account was
secured. The Primrose Cheese Company is one of the four
largest manufacturers of cheese in America. Yet hitherto it
has never advertised its products, except in the grocery trade

50

press. The reputation of Primrose Cheese with the trade is
unexcelled. It is sold from Coast to Coast and from Maine
to Florida. Recently sales have been declining. The competi-
tion of advertised packaged brands has been steadily eating
into their business. They've got to advertise. Mr. Outerbridge
is convinced of this. His principal, Mr. Mr. Himmelschlussel,
President of the Primrose Cheese Company, whom I did not
have the privilege of meeting, is I understand still reluctant.
But he realizes that something has to be done, and he has
consented to the appointment of this agency subject to his
approval of our recommendations. We've got a tough selling
job on all fronts, gentlemen. We've got the whole job to do:
packaging, merchandizing, branding, pricing, merchandiz-
ing the whole works. It's an old conservative firm and their
credit is Ai. Mrs. Betts is experimenting with Primrose
Cheese and the Research department has already started its
work. What we want today, I take it, is some first class ad-
vertising ideas. I have an idea myself, but I shan't spring it
until I've heard from some of the rest of you.

Mr. Sbean: What kind of cheese is it?

Mr. Hanson: Just good, one hundred per cent American
cheese. You ought to know. You ate some of it, didn't you?

Mr. Skean: Yeah, I did. Will you excuse me a moment. I'll
be right back.

(Silence)

Mr. Buffs: Charley, why don't you start the ball rolling
yourself. You said you had an idea.

Mr. Hanson: Very well. I have here, gentlemen, an option
signed by the originator of Mickey and Minnie Mouse. By
the terms of this option, it is understood that in consideration
of a payment of one thousand dollars, which I took the lib-
erty of making on my own responsibility, both Mickey and
Minnie Mouse will positively refrain from writing testimo-
nials for any other cheese for the next three months. My
recommendation, gentlemen, is that our campaign be based

on the testimonials of Mickey and Minnie Mouse. When any-
body says cheese, what's the first thing you think of? Mice.
Who's the world's most famous mouse? Mickey Mouse. Gen-
tlemen, it's never been done before, and it's a natural. What
do you think?

(Silence)

Mrs. Betts: What do we need Mickey for? It's Minnie that
runs the kitchen, isn't it? Excuse me for a moment, please.
I'll be right back.

(Silence)

Mr. Billings: (Who has recently escaped from the copy
desk of a tabloid) Ha!

Mr. Butts: Billings, will you stop that obscene cackle?

The stenographer's record became defective at this point.
Eddie's memory supplied the details. Harmsworth, Princeton,
1928, who had recently graduated from the apprentice course
of the agency, had also elected that moment to be brought
to bed with a big idea of some sort. Harmsworth was typical
of the class of Unhappy Rich Boys for whom advertising
agencies have been required increasingly to serve as dumping
grounds. He was the nephew of the chairman of the board
of Planetary Founders Corporation. It was rumored that on
attaining his majority, he had inherited three million dollars
from his mother. He didn't have to work. He played polo
rather well, but not well enough to rate any great distinction
in his set. And being a serious minded youth with no vices
and no talents, it was necessary for him to have some occupa-
tion, some role in life, to which he could refer in his conver-
sations with Junior League debutantes. Advertising, a roman-
tic, more or less literary profession, filled the bill admirably.

Harmsworth got in at nine o'clock every morning and fre-
quently stayed until six. With the other apprentices, he did
his bit on research, which meant days of hot and heavy foot-
work in the wilds of Queens and the Oranges, ringing door-

bells, and asking impertinent questions of stolidly uncoop-
erative housewives.

This was Harmsworth's first agency conference and his
first Big Idea. Its delivery was complicated by the fact that
in moments of great excitement, Harmsworth stuttered pain-
fully.

Mr. Harmsworth: C-c-can't we t-t-tie this c-campaign up
to the n-n-to the n-n-news? How about hooking it up with
relativity? There's so much f-f- so much food value in ch-ch-
cheese. Relatively, you know. More f-f food value than meat.
More than eggs. Maybe we could g-g-g-g-maybe we could
get Einstein!

Mr. Billings (who is frantically waving two fingers) : Ex-
cuse me, please.

Mr. Butt si All right, Billings.

Mr. Harmsworth: Of course, it may be a b-b- a bum hunch.
I just thought

(Silence)

By this time the conference was pretty well mired. Some-
thing had to be done, and as usual, Blashfield did it. Blash-
field's salary was thirty thousand dollars a year, plus his par-
ticipation as a stockholder in the agency's profits. Blashfield
didn't think that was enough. Every day, in every possible
way, he proved it wasn't enough. Cruelly, sadistically, he ex-
posed the incompetence, the muddleheadedness of his asso-
ciates. He had a string of copy writers and layout men work-
ing under him, all of whom hated him cordially. Their work
was rarely used, except as a foil to exhibit the superior bril-
liance of the agency's star copy-art-plan performer. At the
last moment, in a day or two days, he would knock out the
copy, rough layouts, plan and marketing strategy for a whole
campaign. Artists, printers, engravers, the mechanical pro-
duction staff of the agency, would be called upon to work
nights and Sundays to complete the job. Blashfield's overtime
bills were notorious.

53

Then, with the plan memorandum snatched from the ste-
nographer and flanked by two or three subordinates carrying
unwieldy art and other exhibits, he would lope out of his
office, pile into a taxi, and catch the train for Baltimore just
as it was moving out of the station. The next morning he
would lope back into the office, like a half-back completing
an end run, and deposit the okayed plan, copy, layout and
appropriation on Eddie Butts' desk.

Blashfield had done it again: bis plan, bis copy, bis layouts,
bis sale. Alone in Baltimore he had dazzled the client with
the coruscations of his wit, the machine gun rattle of his
logic, the facile improvisations of genius answering every ob-
jection with pungent phrase or graphic line. O.K. Now Ed-
die, it's up to you to follow it.

From sad experience, Eddie had learned what to do on such
occasions. The first thing to do was to take the train to Balti-
more himself and pick up the pieces. Eddie knew what he
would find. He would find a group of business men experienc-
ing a perfectly dreadful morning after hangover, and indulg-
ing in the usual orgy of remorse and mutual recrimination.

Blashfield had been, shone and conquered. Blashfield was a
brilliant fellow an advertising genius. Sure, and they hoped
to God they never saw him again. Now about this damned
contract they had signed. . . .

Eddie was no genius. As an advertising man he was only
mediocre. But as a fixer he was an expert. Even so, he would
be lucky if, after two weeks of hard work, he emerged with
a modified appropriation and a revised campaign, in which
some remnants of Blashfield's initial performance might or
might not be discernible. The campaign as carried out might
be better or worse than Blashfield's original. Usually it was
worse, for Blashfield's competence was genuine enough. But
for better or worse it was duly billed and commissioned,
which was the sort of thing the agency's treasurer was forever
grousing about. So that Eddie Butts' salary was thirty-five

54

thousand dollars a year, a fact that forever festered like a
thorn in the Achilles' heel of the agency genius.

Because of the repetition of such experience, the heads of
the agency had increasingly restricted Blashfield's pyrotech-
nics to the home grounds, where he could be carefully watched
and protected against himself. No let-up of the Blashfield
drive had resulted, but his hobbled ego required more and
more bloody human sacrifices. His performance at the Prim-
rose Cheese conference had been sanguinary in the extreme.

Beginning suavely, he had made some incisive remarks about
the standards of agency practice, the nature and purpose of
agency conferences. Abruptly he swung into a disquisition
on the natural history and personal habits of mice; mice that
live in old houses but are never housebroken; old mice, young
mice; the love life of the mouse; mother mice and their pink
and squirming progeny; mice and elephants, and the tactless-
ness of both as dinner guests; mice that creep out from under
sinks and leer up at horrified housewives; (at this point Mrs.
Betts lifted her skirts and barely suppressed a shriek.) Mice
and cheese. The kind of cheese mice eat, and the obscene
sounds they, make while eating; the dumbness of mice and the
dumbness of men.

By this time old Hanson was purple with rage. But be-
fore he could interrupt Blashfield, whom the stenographer
had given up trying to follow, was well launched upon a
burlesque of relativity, which rapidly took form as a con-
vention of mouse domestic science experts, presided over by
Minnie Mouse, and discussing the relative dietetic merits of
meat, cheese, caviar, etc. Even Harmsworth laughed, partly
to cover his confusion.

Then abruptly the wizard's mood changed. Come on fel-
lows. Let's be serious. What's the best way to sell cheese?
Primrose Cheese?

With rapid logic he outlined the campaign that could,
should and must be conducted. The consumption of cheese in

55

America was negligible compared to its consumption in
France, England, Germany, Switzerland throughout the
world. The dietetic habits of America must be transformed.
An institutional campaign, then? No, a selling campaign,
hard-boiled selling copy that would boost the sales of Prim-
rose Cheese from week to week and from month to month.
But the copy would be educational too. It would show the
things that Americans do eat and drink, and dovetail cheese
into the menu; Primrose Cheese for the cocktail party. Cheese
for dessert the continental idea. That's what all the best
people are doing and the rest of America must be shamed into
imitating the Best People. Style. Style in the copy. Style in
the art. Jean Mazarin for the art he'll be in New York in
two weeks and he'll love it.

Now, as to the trademark that some of you have been
worrying about. What is it? A primrose, crossed with a key.
It looks a little like a swastika, and a little like a Jewish
candlestick. But look at it now.

Blashfield executed a few swift strokes on his sketching
pad.

There's your solution. It's still a little like a swastika, and all
the patriotic Germans will notice it. It's also a little like a Jew-
ish candlestick, and all the Jews will notice that. But a second
look will convince anybody that it's neither one nor the other
and that's just fine for everybody.

As usual, Blashfield had swept all before him. The confer-
ence broke up after an assignment of preliminary tasks, all
to be executed under his supervision. The other Big Ideas, of
course, were never removed from the appropriate receptacle
into which Blashfield, with surgical dispatch, had consigned
them.

Harmsworth had played polo all the next week, and when
he returned was assigned to a bank account. Hanson had
groused for a while. His first idea in twenty years. And on
investigation it proved not to be his idea after all. It was his

56

secretary's idea, and for several weeks thereafter the gossip of
the women's room was enlivened by the lady's complaints
about how hard it was for a girl to get ahead in a big
agency.

The campaign had consumed the time of eight or ten people
for three months. In the end, Blashfield had scrapped their
efforts and done the whole job himself in a last minute orgy
of nerve-racking and expensive nightwork by all and sun-
dry.

Eddie Butts winced as he read a memorandum from the
Treasurer, protesting against so huge a bill for preliminary
work on what was after all, not a major account.

Well, there it was. And now if Bob Niemyer's steer was
right, there would be hell to pay tomorrow.

Eddie sighed, pushed his dictaphone into the corner, and
helped himself to a shot of the house liquor.

2. THE FIRE ALARM

It was close to midnight, and Eddie Butts was in the middle
of his third pipe before Bob Niemyer, the space salesman, and
his German friend, stumbled through the darkened outer
office and banged on his door.

They were not drunk; merely very formal and very, very
earnest.

"Eddie, meet my friend Oscar Schleiermacher . . . Thanks,
I guess I can stand another . . . Eddie, I'm afraid this is
serious. Oscar knows what he's talking about, and he tells
me that the big shot of the Primrose Cheese Company, Haken-
schmidt

"Himmelschlussel, August B. Himmelschussel," prompted
Oscar.

"All right, Himmelschlussel. Well, as I was saying, I was
telling Oscar about the swell presentation you'd worked up
for Primrose Cheese naturally he wants a piece of it for his

57

friends on the Vortschrift and when I got to the big idea,
cheese and beer, cheese and cigarettes, cheese for the cocktail
party, why I'm telling you Oscar almost passed out. Didn't
you, Oscar?"

Oscar made an eloquent gesture, hitched his chair forward,
and drained a large glass of Scotch at a swallow.

"You see, Eddie, this bird Himmelschlussel runs his own
business. And how! He's got the o.k. on everything, see?
What he says goes. And what he's going to say when he sees
this campaign of yours won't even be funny."

Mr. Schleiermacher nodded solemnly.

"Er ist ein Herrenhuter. Sein Frau auch."

"There," said Bob. "What did I tell you? He's a Herren-
huter. What's a Herrenhuter? That's what you're going to
find out when old Himmelschlussel gets an eyeful of that
French night club art moderne Blashfield has cooked up for
him. A Herrenhuter is a Fundamentalist, only worse. Let's
be serious, Eddie. This Himmelschlussel is religious as all hell.
He's a prohibitionist. Some of his coin goes to the Anti-
Saloon League. What's more, Mrs. Himmelschlussel is one of
the big shots in the Anti-Cigarette League. Nobody that
works for Primrose Cheese can drink, smoke or forget to say
his prayers. Isn't that right, Oscar?"

"Ach, ja," said Oscar. "Er ist ein Herrenhuter. Sein Frau
auch."

"His wife too," said Mr. Niemyer. "So when Oscar gives
me the lowdown, I says to him: 'Eddie Butts has got to know
about this. Eddie Butts is a friend of mine. Eddie and I are
just like this'. Y' get me, Eddie? What makes it worse, this
Himmelschlussel has a bad case of shell shock on advertising
anyway. Ain't that right, Oscar?

"Schrecklich," confirmed Oscar with an expansive gesture.

"The story goes like this," continued Mr. Niemyer. "The
local team of the League wins the pennant, see? And Him-
melschlussel, he's a fan. Sure, baseball, that's his only vice. It

5*

seems he has a nephew playing shortstop on the team. That
was eight years ago. Well, Old Himmelschlussel, he's the
proud uncle, and he's got to do something about it, see? So
what does he do? A big dinner for the team, see? Hell with
expense. Sauerbraten, Kartofelkloss, leberknudel, hasenpfeffer,
the whole works. No beer, no hard liquor. No cigarettes.
Cheese. Boy, was there cheese! Big camembert in the middle of
the table. Four feet high, weighs eighty pounds. Mottoes.
Clock works. Imitation dugout. Birdie pops out of dugout.
Cuckoo, cuckoo, cuckoo counts the score, see? Fine. Swell.
Cost a lot of money. Only thing is, you know camembert.
Eighty pounds of camembert. Ripe. Not so good. And those
bush leaguers thirsty as camels, and no beer. So they get
tough. Bean the birdie with pop bottles. Raise hell, see? That's
bad enough, but next day the papers get funny. Himmel-
(schlussel don't advertise, see? They keep it up for days. Him-
melschlussel sore. Feelings hurt. You tell him, Oscar. "Were his
feelings hurt?

"Vom herz, Herr Butts. Vom herz. Ach, schrecklich."
Oscar held his head and rocked in remembered sympathy.

"So Himmelschlussel goes Herrenhuter again, worse than
ever. Ten thousand simoleons that year to the Anti-Saloon
League. And no more advertising stunts. That contract of
yours how his sales manager got that out of the old man
I just can't imagine, unless they're in trouble . . . What's
that, Eddie. Don't want to rub it in. Just trying to do you a
favor, see? You and me are pals. As I says to Oscar, I says
what d'you say, Eddie?"

"I said, Jesus H. Christ!"

Eddie Butts wasn't listening. The fire alarm had rung. He
was busy hunting numbers in the office telephone directory.
Blashfield first. Damn Blashfield. Damn Hanson. Why hadn't
they found out about this big shot?

"Thanks, Bob," said Eddie, as he led his visitors to the
elevator. "I'll let you know what happens. We got a day and

59

a half. Maybe we can pull out. Good-night. Good-night, Mr.
Schleiermacher, and thanks for the steer."

3. RESCUE PARTY

After hours. The genius of advertising burns brightest after
hours. When the noise of traffic is stilled, when the stream of
office time-servers has flowed north into the Bronx, east and
west under and over the rivers to be blotted up by the vast
and formless spaces of Long Island and Jersey, light still
lingers in the sky-scrapers of the mid-town district.

Light and vision. Not money alone could buy the devotion
of these weary-eyed night workers. It is something else, some-
thing strange, incredible, miraculous perhaps a little mad.
Is it for beauty that they burn themselves? For truth? For
some great cause? No, it is none of these. It is like a perverse
and blinding discharge of human electricity, like athletes bat-
tling on the gridiron, or soldiers going over the top.

In the Sargasso pool of quiet, high above the night-stricken
city, what toils, what genuine heart-breaks, what farcical
triumphs are consummated!

From the moment that Eddie Butts turned in the fire
alarm, the wheels of the Kidd, Kirby & Dougherty agency
never stopped turning. Blashfield swooped in from West-
chester, worked all night, and when his secretary came in the
next morning, turned over a basketful of new copy for typ-
ing. Eddie Butts' dictaphone whirred continuously. Tense
voices barked into telephones. Printers, appalled by impossi-
ble demands, wailed in anguish, achieved the impossible, and
viciously pyramided the overtime charges. Layout men never
left their drawing boards. Typists worked in relays. What
had taken three months to do must be done again, but this
time in thirty-six hours.

It was done. Miraculously, it was done. Blashfield again.
Blashfield the magnificent. Never was the man so dangerous

60

as when, with his back against the wall, he was challenged by
the impossible. A new Big Idea had been conceived and was
well on the way to birth before he reached the office. Cheese
and pie. New England stuff. Native American. Simple, homey.
The New England grandma. The Southern mammy. To hell
with Mazarin. Tell him, sorry, pay his bill or part of it, and
charge it up to profit and loss. Forsythe is our man. Forsythe,
the best buck-eye artist in America. He's busy? What of it?
I said, get him.

Forsythe performed. Blashfield performed. Clerks, messen-
gers, typists everybody performed.

By noon of the scheduled day for the presentation the
miracle was accomplished. Or almost. Typewriters still rattled
and savage-lipped production clerks still yapped into the tele-
phone. One o'clock. No lunch for anybody. Two o'clock, and
the final pages of the revised plan were bound into the port-
folio. Three o'clock, and Himmelschlussel was expected.
Three-fifteen, and no Himmelschlussel. Had something gone
wrong?

Only Colonel Kidd himself Calvin Kidd, author, editor
and advertising man only Colonel Kidd remained calm.
Back of his desk a framed motto proclaimed the solid premise
on which his professional imperturbability was based: "There
is somebody wiser than anybody. That somebody is every-
body." It doesn't make sense, does it? Sure, that's just the
point. Calvin Kidd was a mystic. He remained calm. But his
associates, some of whom may have felt that their jobs were
at stake, were less philosophic. At the telephone switchboard,
the battery of skilled operators grew querulous striving to
release the tide of out-going calls. Himmelschlussel. Himmel-
schlussel! Where in hell is Himmelschlussel?

4. THE DELIVERY

It wasn't Dorothy's fault. Afterwards, since it didn't mat-

61

ter anyway nothing mattered everybody acknowledged
that you couldn't fairly pin it on Dorothy.

Dorothy was the reception clerk, stationed in the lobby of
the offices of Kidd, Kirby & Dougherty, with a pad of forms
before her and a telephone receiver clasped over her lovely
blonde hair. Dorothy knew her role, which was to make quick
and accurate judgments and translate them into action.

So that when the little old man with the umbrella
stepped out of the elevator, she knew instantly what to do.
The Primrose Cheese account was in a jam. A messenger was
expected from the printer, bringing revised proofs. She had
been warned to rush him through without delay to Mac in the
mechanical production department. Dorothy spotted him in-
stantly and beckoned him to the desk. The little old man ad-
vanced somewhat diffidently.

"I am Mr. Himmelschlussel. I

"From Hazenfuss, yes. You're just in time. Go right
through the side door and ask for Mac."

Hazenfuss Brothers was the printing shop which at the
stern behest of Blashfield had performed the current typo-
graphical miracle.

The little old man hesitated, but Dorothy, gracious but im-
perative, motioned him to the side door.

He vanished into a welter of comptometers, typewriters and
proof presses. Dorothy had just an instant to reflect that she
hadn't seen this particular messenger before. Also, wasn't it
Hazenfuss that dolled up their messengers in naval uniforms,
so that they all looked like musical comedy Commodores?
This must be a new one. Come to think of it, he did wear
a kind of uniform, too certainly was a funny old geezer.
Maybe Hazenfuss had thought up a new advertising dodge.

Meanwhile, Mr. Himmelschlussel was still trying to find
Mac. Successively, he was shunted to the shipping room, to
the store room clerk, to the purchasing clerk. Early in the
ordeal, Mr. Himmelschlussel began to lose things. First he lost

62

his umbrella. Then he lost his hat. Coincidentally with this
second disaster, he completely lost his English.

Alarmed by the clamor of what he took to be a minor riot
in the mechanical production department, Pfeiffer, the office
manager, emerged from his cubicle to see an elderly German-
American gesticulating wildly in the middle of a circle of
bewildered clerks. At intervals, his gray pompadour bristling,
he would make a determined break for one of the innumerable
doors, only to be hauled back by an expostulating clerk.

Fortunately, Pfeiffer spoke German, for by this time Mr.
Himmelschlussel could speak nothing else. . . .

When the perspiring Pfeiffer finally persuaded the long
awaited client to permit himself to be led into the presence of
Colonel Kidd himself, a strange quiet had descended upon the
agency. Mr. Himmelschlussel himself was quiet. He would
speak neither English nor German. In response to Colonel
Kidd's urbanities he merely grunted. Blashfield's irresistible
wisecracks died unborn upon the desolate air.

Silently, the procession wended to the conference room. In
silence, Mr. Himmelschlussel listened to the reading of the
plan. Upon the lavish exhibit of layouts, charts, proofs, etc.,
he turned a cold Prussian eye. Silence.

At last, Mr. Himmelschlussel spoke.

"Gentlemen, I haf joost come from de bank. Business is
bad. We haf an offer from de Universal Foods Corporation
to buy Primrose Cheese. It is a good offer. It is a very good
offer. We have accepted that offer.

"Dese" he gestured indifferently at the decorated walls of
the conference room "dese iss very pooty pictures. De Uni-
versal Foods people, maybe dey like to look at dem. I am
sorry. I got to go now. My wife and I, we have friends in
Brooklyn. Good day, gentlemen."

In the far corner of the lobby an elderly woman was wait-
ing. She had been waiting a long time. Dorothy thought she
was perhaps a cleaning woman, or the mother of one of the

shipping room boys. She said nothing and politely resisted
Dorothy's gracious solicitudes. She had the corner to herself
now, and Dorothy noticed that the space salesmen had put
out their cigarettes.

Eventually Mr. Himmelschlussel emerged, escorted by
Colonel Kidd. She put her hand under his arm. They got into
the elevator. They went to Brooklyn . . .

Again that evening Eddie Butts worked late. He was tired,
very tired. He had missed lunch entirely and it was after
seven. Eddie was hungry. There, on the corner of the desk,
was a left-over sample. Cheese. Primrose Cheese.

Holding the package at arm's length, Eddie went to the
open window. It took a long time falling. You couldn't hear
it strike, but you could just barely see the yellow splotch it
made on the pavement.

Eddie lingered at the window. Thirty-two stories. Every
now and then an advertising man jumps out of one of those
high windows in the Grand Central district. Usually, it is
the follow-up man, the old reliable. Usually, it is Eddie Butts.

CHAPTER

AS ADVERTISED:

The Product of Advertising

THE foregoing fictionized account of what happens in a
large advertising agency will doubtless strike the lay reader
as exaggerated. It will be denounced, more or less sincerely,
by advertising men who have lived and toiled so long on the
other side of the Advertising Looking Glass that the bar-
barous farce-as-usual of advertising practice has become for
them the only reality, the only "sanity" with which their
minds are equipped to deal.

The account is nevertheless true in every essential respect.
The fiction is no stranger than many of the sober facts set
forth elsewhere in this volume.

We have now to consider what sort of product this adver-
tising mill turns out. Again, the writer's inclusions may seem
at first thought too sweeping.

The advertisement itself is the least significant part of this
product. The advertisement is an instrument, a tool, and the
ad-man is a toolmaker. In using these tools the newspapers,
magazines and radio broadcasters become something other
than what they are commonly supposed to be; that is one
result. By operating as they must operate, not as they are
supposed to operate, these major instruments of social com-
munication in turn manufacture products, and these products
are the true end products of the advertising industry.

The most significant product, or result, is the effective dis-
solution of practically all local or regional, autonomous or

65

semi-autonomous cultures based economically on functional
processes of production and exchange and culturally on the
ethical, moral and aesthetic content of such processes. The
advertising-manufactured substitute for these organic cul-
tures is a national, standardized, more or less automatic
mechanism, galvanized chiefly by pecuniary motivations and
applying emulative pressures to all classes of the population.

In England, where the organic culture was older, richer
and more resistant, publicists and educators are more keenly
aware of the significance and potency of advertising, although
there the business is still relatively embryonic, lacking either
the scale or the intensity of the American phenomenon.
Culture and Environment, by F. R. Leavis and Denys Thomp-
son, best exhibits the 1933 English awareness of what is hap-
pening, and this excellent book, representing the collaboration
of a literary critic and a schoolmaster will be referred to again
in later chapters. Among English creative writers, D. H.
Lawrence seems to have grasped intuitively almost from the
beginning, the nature and causes of the disintegrative process.

In America, the most impressive testimony, both conscious
and unconscious, to the progressive disintegration of the
organic American culture is contained in the work of Sher-
wood Anderson. Anderson grew up in a small Middle Western
town during the period when the organic relation between
agriculture and small town craft-industry was being shat-
tered by the emergent forces of mass production, mass dis-
tribution, and by the pseudoculture which the rapidly
expanding apparatus of advertising manufacture as a mechani-
cal substitute for what it destroyed. First as a manufacturer
and later as an advertising man, Anderson participated un-
willingly in this dual process of destruction and substitu-
tion.

This experience, in the view of the writer, provides the
essential clue to an understanding of Anderson's verse, short
stories and novels. Much of the brilliant early work was writ-

66

ten on the marginal time of an advertising copy writer em-
ployed by a large Chicago agency. It has a single theme: the
passionate rejection of the ad-man's pseudoculture and the
nostalgic search for the organic culture that was already dead
or dying. Anderson saw that the disintegration and steriliza-
tion of the culture is reflected in the fragmentation and
neutering of the individual. In novel after novel, story after
story, we see him separating the quick from the dead and
driving first backward, then forward, into some terrain more
habitable for the human spirit.

The reader will perhaps have been struck by the inhuman,
hysterical, phantasmagoric quality of advertising agency prac-
tice as described in the preceding chapter. This is inevitable.
The prime mover of the advertising mill, the drive for profits,
has no concern whatever for human life. Without organic
life itself, the advertising mill is fueled by the organic cul-
tural life which it disintegrates and consumes, but does not
restore or replace. On cultural as well as on economic grounds
it may be said that this organic social heritage is not in-
exhaustible. Hence the advertising mill not only disintegrates
and destroys all the humanity that comes within the sphere
of its influence but is ultimately, like the modern capitalist
economy of which it is a part, self-destructive.

One sees this advertising mill as a coldly whirring turbine
whose hum is so loud, so continuous, so omnipresent that we
no longer hear it. Its force is centrifugal: all warm human
life is expelled into the peripheral darkness where it continues
to revolve although the machine can no longer use this
nebula of burned-out dead and dying matter.

At the heart of the machine we see dim figures moving:
the sort of people whom the writer has tried to make real
and credible in the preceding chapter. They rush here and
there, fiddling with levers, filling the grease cups. . . . They
are dead men. Against the blue light their hands are lifted
in queer, stylized gestures. They speak, but what they say is

without human meaning. It is the machine speaking through
them and the sound comes to us like the sound of a phono-
graph playing a cracked record, hugely and hoarsely ampli-
fied. The lips of the robots move and we hear: . . . "Adver-
tising is the new world force lustily breeding progress. It is
the clarion note of business principle. It is the bugle call to
prosperity. But great force as it is, advertising must seek all
aid from literature and art in order that it may assume that
dignity which is its rightful heritage. Advertising is ...
oom-pah! oom-pah! Under the New Deal good advertising
will become more essential than ever. It will be in a position
to help the business executive to avoid those wasteful and
excessive practices in selling which so often add needless costs
to needed products. Good advertising is opposed to senseless
price cutting and to unfair competition. Constructive sell-
. . . oom-pah! oom-pah! No sales policy is permanently
beneficial that has its roots in deception . . . oom-pah! oom-
pah! It costs a lot of money when a community is to be
attacked . . . oom-pah! oom-pah! Remember that while a
shot-gun makes a lot more noise than a rifle it just messes
things up. Aim the rifle well and you get a nice clean hole
. . . oom-pah! oom-pah! The most popular dinner guest in
Jerusalem . . . oom-pah! oom-pah! Every occupation has
its special satisfactions. The architect and the builder see the
product of their planning take shape in steel and stone. The
surgeon snatches life from the jaws of death. The teacher and
the minister give conviction and power to the things that
are unseen. Our calling is not less significant. We build of
imperishable materials, we who work with words. . . . All
things perish, but the word remains . . . oom-pah! oom-
pah! oom-pah! oom-pah! oom-pah! . . ."

They are dead men. Their bones are bakelite. Their blood
is water, their flesh is pallid yes, prick them and they do not
bleed. Their eyes are veiled and sad or staring and a little
mad. From them comes an acrid odor they do not notice it,

6S

it may be only the ozone discharge of the machine itself*
When you ask them to tell you what they are doing, they do
not know, or at least they cannot tell you. They are voice-
less, indeed, self-less only the machine speaks through them
.... Dead men tell no tales.

Most are like that. But here and there among those dim
wraiths is one who still keeps some semblance of life. An ar-
tist, or perhaps one who would have been a scholar or a
scientist but that he has suffered the spleen of an ill fate. Art
and science are strong passions. Most of these exceptional ones
become in time like the others. But they are the stronger
spirits and now and then one of them escapes. They do not
like to talk of what they have seen and done there at the
heart of the machine. They like to pretend that it never
happened; that it was a kind of nightmare, as indeed it was.
But when tales are told it is they who tell them. From time
to time Sherwood Anderson has told such tales. Recently he
has begun to tell more of them. They are quite horrible tales.
Artists find it difficult to use this material. The advertising
business is harder to write about than the war. It would per-
haps bring some of the dead back to life if more of such
tales were told.

But the machine tenders are not the only dead. Great waves
of force shudder outward from the machine, and more and
more this cold electric force substitutes for the life-force of
the people whom the waves surround and penetrate. They too
seem to lose the color and movement of natural human life.
They twitch with little fears and itch with little greeds.
They become nervous, jittery, mechanical. They can no longer
weep with spontaneous tears or rock with spontaneous laugh-
ter. They too become in a sense self -less so that one cannot
expect them to be true to themselves or true to others. The
waves which increasingly substitute for their flagging or-
ganic will-to-live the waves have indeed not heard of this
truth. For the prime mover from which the waves come is be-

yond good and evil, truth and untruth, and the waves are
everywhere. They speak, these creatures, their lips move, but
again it is the machine speaking through them:

. . . "He invented the foods shot from guns at the skin
you love to touch but your best friends won't tell you for
three out of five are facing calendar fear another day of
suspense learn to be charming the smart point of view with-
out cost grandpa said I'll let you know my health to Quaker
Oats I owe upon my face came long ago the smile that won't
come off for skin eruptions need not worry you guard your
dresses spare your friends perspiration may cost you both
who'd believe they called me skinny 4 months ago I should
think she'd notice it herself in closeups you can trust Blick's
Velvasheen a better mouthwash at a big saving isn't it wonder-
ful how Mary Ellen won the $ 5 ,000 beauty contest and Mrs.
Jones wins her husband back at the foot of my baby's crib
I made a solemn promise the girl of his dreams but she almost
lost him in a month she didn't have a trace of constipation
reports Dr. David of Paris what color nails at Newport all
shades I'll lose my job if this keeps up can't make a sale
can't even get people to see me I'd better ask the sales man-
ager what's holding me back couldn't take on that man you
just sent me seemed competent but careless about B. O.
what a fool she is takes pains washing a sweater gives no care
to her teeth and gums and she has pink toothbrush Mae West
and the big hat she wore in "She Done Him Wrong" who
will be the first to wear it in Chicago if Mona Lisa could
have used these 4 Rosaleen eye beauty aids let's take a look
at the record toasting frees Lucky Strike cigarettes from
throat irritation William T. Tilden II steady smokers turn to
Camels William T. Tilden II did you hear the French na-
tion decorates Campbell's soup chef for sending the finest
cooking throughout the civilized world Yeow! let's run away
to sea travel has its niceties. . . ."

This sub-human or un-human jabberwocky saturates the

70

terrestrial atmosphere. It pours out of hundreds of thousands
of loud speakers from eight o'clock in the morning until
midnight. Doubtless the biologists will shortly inform us that
this transformation of the auditory environment has caused
definite degeneration and malformation of the average Ameri-
can ear. Certainly the eyes must have been affected, for the
same jabberwocky in print glares from the pages of billions
of copies of magazines and newspapers and other billions of
posters, carcards and mail communications. Is it any wonder
that the American population tends increasingly to speak,
think, feel in terms of this jabberwocky? That the stimuli of
art, science, religion are progressively expelled to the periphery
of American life to become marginal values, cultivated by
marginal people on marginal time? That these marginal peo-
ple are prevented from exercising their proper and necessary
social functions except by permission of the jabberwock?
That many of them indeed compromise fatally with the crea-
ture and translate what they have to say into its obscene
jabberwocky?

Let us not forget that the jabberwock feeds on what it
destroys and that it restores and replaces nothing. It is fueled
by the organic will-to-live of the population, which it calls
"buying power." This buying power is progressively ex-
hausted advertising as Veblen pointed out, is a form of
sabotage on production just as our inorganic resources of
coal, oil and minerals are progressively exhausted. After four
depression years the jabberwock is hungry. It has devoured
large sections of the lower and lower middle classes and
expelled their dry bones, burned clean of their buying power,
into the outer darkness. There the electric breath of the
jabberwock still plays on them, but they are ash and slag.
They cannot burn, they cannot feed the machine. Fifteen
million of them are dependent upon relief. Another thirty
million are so lean that they can fuel the jabberwock scarcely
at all. You see them dumped like mail sacks on park benches.

71

You see them fluttering like autumn leaves, magnetized into
thin wavering lines job lines, bread lines. They sit in chilly
rooms listening as before to the voice of the jabberwock,
unwilling to believe that they have been consumed, discarded.
The waves still pulsate and the ash of the great radio audience
still glows a little there is so little other food. What is the
jabberwock saying now? ... "I will share. . . . Don't sell
America short. . . . Forward, America. . . ."

CHAPTER

THE MAGAZINES:
I. The Command to Buy

"FORWARD America"; "I have shared"; "We do our part."
The depression slogans of both the Hoover and the Roose-
velt administrations seem to imply a national unity, a culture.
The people are to be "sold" on this culture as a part of the task
of rehabilitating it. It is therefore proper to examine the con-
tent of this culture, slightly down at the heels, as it is, in
this fifth year of the depression.

For this purpose the evidence provided by the editorial,
article, fictional and advertising contents of the contemporary
mass and class magazines is extraordinarily revealing. We
have seen that the press, including the magazine press, is used
as an instrument of rule. The rulers are the manufacturers,
advertisers, distributors, financiers, etc., who use not merely
the magazine advertisements but the total apparatus of this
periodical press to enforce "the command to buy." This rule
is exercised both by direct injunction to buy and by the pro-
motion and stimulus of emulative and snob motivations,
which in our society must be largely satisfied through the
purchase and display of things.

With the motivations and technique of this rule clearly in
mind, we should expect to find a treatment of sex, economics,
morals, philosophy, science, etc. designed to nourish and
stimulate the buying motif. We find all of this and more.
We find what amounts to a conspiracy of silence regarding all
those aspects of the individual and social life that do not con-

73

tribute to the objective of the advertiser, which is practically
identical with that of the magazine itself. That objective is
to promote sales and to extend, complicate and consolidate
sheer emulative materialism as a way of life. We venture to
say that no one who has not attentively examined these maga-
zines inch by inch can conceive the astounding, sterile vacuity
of these enormously expensive and enormously read "culture-
bearers."

The question that immediately arises is: do these magazines
accurately reflect the culture or are they merely trying to in-
flict a pseudoculture on their readers? In a curious way both
things are true. It would seem that both the culture as lived
and the culture as reflected by the magazines are pseudo-
cultures. Neither in life nor even in the make-believe of the
magazine fictioneer does this pseudoculture satisfy anybody.
It does not even satisfy the wealthy, who can afford to live
according to the snob, acquisitive, emulative pattern. The
reductio ad absurdum of the theory of a self -sufficient ac-
quisitive culture is found in Arts & Decoration which bullies
and cajoles the rich into the discharge of their function as
the ideal human representatives of a culture which has no
content or meaning outside of acquisition and display. In
arguing for this way of life a writer in Arts & Decoration
is reduced to the following remarkable bit of philosophic yea-
saying: "Chromium is more expensive than no chromium."

These magazines are designed and edited with a view to
making the readers content with this acquisitive culture, but
even a commercial fictioneer has to put up a human "front."
He has to use models. He has to exhibit, however super-
ficially and shabbily the kind of people who work in Ameri-
can offices and factories and on farms, and who walk the
streets of American cities and towns. In so doing he inad-
vertently and inevitably gives the whole show away. He
proves that these robots galvanized by pure emulation are
fragile puppets of glass. Mostly the characters are faked.

74

When they are at all convincing they are definitely dissatis-
fied and unhappy.

This pseudoculture which is both reflected and promoted
by the magazines is evidently in a process of conflict and
change. In fact it may be said that there are two cultures:
the older, more organic American culture, and the new, hard,
arid culture of acquisitive emulation pure and simple. These
cultures are in perpetual conflict. The emulative culture is
what the magazine lives by; the older more human culture is
what the reader wistfully desires. However, the magazines
can afford to give the reader only a modicum of these warm
humanities.

The problem of the editor is essentially similar to that of
the advertising copy writer. The purpose of the advertisement
is to produce consumers by suitable devices of cajolement and
psychological manipulation, in which truth is used only in so
far as it is profitable to use truth. But the advertisement must
be plausible. It must not destroy the reader-confidence which
the copy writer is exploiting.

In the same way the magazine editor may be thought of
as producing, in the total editorial and fiction content of the
magazine, a kind of advertisement. In this view the advertise-
ment say in issue of The Woman's Home Companion must
have some human plausibility; it must contain some truth,
some reality, otherwise the magazine would lose circulation,
i. e., reader-confidence. But the editor must never forget that
the serious business of the magazine is the production of cus-
tomers just as the writer of the individual advertisement
must not use either more or less truth and decency than will
produce a maximum of sales for his client.

We examined single issues of thirteen representative and
large circulation magazines in an attempt to determine the
following facts:

i.) Does the magazine promote buying, not only in the

75

advertisements, but in the editorial, article, feature and fic-
tion section of the magazine?

2.) To what extent do the magazines permit criticism of
the acquisitive culture?

3.) Since literature, even popular literature, is supposed to
reflect a culture, what kind of a culture, judged by the con-
tents of these thirteen magazines, have we got?

The thirteen magazines were chosen with the idea of having
as many different types of magazines represented as possible.
The attempt was also made to select magazines going to read-
ers who belong to different income classes. Eight of the maga-
zines analyzed have over one million circulation, and con-
stitute over a third of the twenty-one magazines in the United
States having circulations of this size. The list of magazines
studied is as follows:

MAGAZINE STUDY

Name of Magazine Circulation Income

Level

American Weekly* 5,581,000* * Low

True Story
Household

Liberty
Photoplay

1,597,000 Low

1,664,000 Low

1,378,000 Medium

518,000 Medium

American Magazine 2,162,000 Medium

Type

Illustrated Hearst Sun-
day supplement.
Confession magazine.
Woman's magazine:
rural type.
White-collar class.
Largest circulation
movie magazine.
Small-town, small-city
magazine.

* American Weekly, issue of Jan. 7, 1934; True Story, Dec. 1933; Household,
Nov. 1933; Liberty, Dec. 23, 1933; Photoplay, Jan. 1934; American Magazine,
Dec. 1933; Woman's Home Companion, Jan. 1934; Cosmopolitan, Dec. 1933;
Saturday Evening Post, Dec. 16, 1933; Harper's Bazaar, Dec. 1933; Harper's
Magazine, Jan. 1934; Nation's Business, Nov. 1933; Arts & Decoration, Nov.
1933-

** Publisher's estimate.

76

MAGAZINE STUDY (Continued)

Name of Magazine Circulation Income

Level Type

Woman's Home

Companion 2,235,000 Medium Woman's magazine:

urban type.
Cosmopolitan 1,636,000 Medium Urban magazine: much

sex fiction.
Saturday Evening
Post

Harper's Bazaar
Harper's Magazine

Nation's Business

Arts & Decoration

2,295,000 Medium Greatest advertising

medium in the world.

100,000 High High style fashions.

111,000 High High-brow and sophis-
ticated.

214,000 High Organ of the Chamber
of Commerce of the
U. S.

23,000 High Interior decoration for
the rich.

FINDINGS:

Our analysis shows that buying is promoted not only in
the advertisements but in the fiction, articles, features, and
editorials. A Woman's Home Companion story mentions a
Rolls-Royce eighteen times. Harper's Bazaar gives free public-
ity in its article section to 532 stores and products. The snob
appeal, essentially a buying appeal, since successful snobbism
depends in the main on the possession of things, appears in
68 per cent of the subject matter of one magazine. To sum-
marize: We find when the percentages for the thirteen maga-
zines are averaged, that 30 per cent of the total space of the
magazines is devoted to advertisements, and 13 per cent is
devoted to editorial promotion of buying. Hence 43 per
cent of the space in these magazines is devoted to commercial

77

advertisements, and what may be called editorial advertise-
ments, combined. We find also that snobbism is a major or
minor appeal in 22 per cent of the subject matter of the
magazines.

There is a very striking correlation between the amount
of space devoted to promoting buying and the amount of
space devoted to criticism of the acquisitive culture. The more
space a magazine devotes to promoting buying the less space
it devotes to instruction, comment or criticism concerning
economic and political affairs. Four of the thirteen magazines
do not mention depression or recovery at all. Only two maga-
zines, True Story and Liberty, question the desirability of
the capitalist economy. Only two magazines, the American
and Nation's Business, question whether it can be permanently
maintained. In summary we find that: (i) No criticism of
business appears in any editorial. (2) Some criticism of the
acquisitive culture appears in the fiction. (3) Most of the
criticism of existing conditions appears in articles and readers'
letters. (4) The thirteen magazines devote, on the average,
24 per cent of their editorial and article space to supplying
the reader with information about economics, politics, and
international affairs. ( 5 ) The women's magazines, which rank
highest among the thirteen magazines in respect to the edi-
torial promotion of buying, rank very low in regard to com-
ment on economics, politics, and international affairs. They
devote, on the average, 27 per cent of their space to editorial
promotion of buying, and only 5 per cent of their space to
comment on affairs.

The following conclusions about the culture reflected in
these magazines may be drawn:

(1) This culture displays a surplus of snobbism, and a
deficiency of interest in sex, economics, politics, religion, art,
and science.

(2) The United States does not have one homogeneous
culture; it has class cultures. Summarizing the findings of this

study in relation to class cultures, one may say that the cul-
ture of the poor shows a strong bias in the direction of fear
and sex, that the culture of the middle-class displays less
sense of reality than the culture of the poor or the rich, and
a higher degree of sexual frigidity, and that the culture of the
rich tends to be emulative and mercenary.

An analysis of 58 fiction heroines in 45 sex fiction stories
in the ten magazines containing fiction shows the following
differences between the heroines who appear in the magazines
of the poor, the middle class, and the rich. In the magazines
of the rich, 5 1 per cent of the heroines are mercenary. In the
magazines of the middle class, 56 per cent of the heroines are
unawakened or unresponsive women. In the magazines of the
poor, 45 per cent of the women can be classified as being
sexually responsive. The number of babies appertaining to
these fiction heroines also throws interesting light on our class
cultures. In magazine fiction as in life the poor women have
the largest number of babies. While the 41 fiction heroines of
the middle-class magazines produce only three children, the
eleven fiction heroines of the magazines of the poor produce
nine.

Further distinctions between the classes appear in the statis-
tics on emulation. Emulation is the dominant appeal in the
ads of six magazines which go to readers on the upper income
levels. In the remaining seven magazines the magazines of
the lower income levels fear is the dominant appeal. Emula-
tion is also much stronger in the fiction and subject matter of
the magazines of the upper income levels; it is, in fact, almost
twice as strong as in the magazines of the poor. In the lower
income group> magazines, 17 per cent of the subject matter
has emulation as a major or minor appeal; in the upper in-
come magazines, 31 per cent of the subject matter features
emulation.

(3) The acquisitive culture, that is the culture which
emphasizes things and snobbism, battles, in the pages of these

79

magazines, with an older tradition and culture, in which sex,
economics, politics, and sentiment play major roles. The ac-
quisitive culture is dominant in five magazines, the older
culture in four magazines, while in the remaining four maga-
zines, the two cultures co-exist side by side. One may say, in
summary, that the acquisitive culture cannot stand on its own
feet. It does not satisfy. Except in the fashion magazines, and
in some of the women's magazines, it has to be offered to the
reader with a considerable admixture of the older traditional
humanities.

(4) Correlating our various statistical findings, we note
that the acquisitive culture is not accessible to the majority of
Americans; also that it is not popular with the majority of
Americans. The American population apparently has a sturdy
realism which the magazine editors are forced to recognize.
They do not want to spend their time reading fairy tales
about the lives of the rich. What they prefer, is to read about
heroes and heroines who are exactly one rung above them on
the economic and social ladder, a rung of the ladder to which
they themselves, by dint of luck, accident, or hard work,
may hope to climb to.

It would appear that the acquisitive culture reflected in
these magazines is a luxury product designed for women and
the rich. The focus upon women is because of their position
as buyers for the family. The success of the emulative sales
promoting technique as applied to middle-class women would
appear to rest upon the fact that these women are restless,
that they suffer from unsatisfied romanticism, and that, in
many cases, they probably suffer also from unhappiness in
their marital relations. This is perhaps the most significant
finding of the study and we believe the reader will find it
amply supported by the detailed evidence adduced in the
succeeding chapters.

80

II. Chromium is More Expensive

Culture is, by definition, the sum total of the human en-
vironment to which any individual is exposed and the test
of a culture, or civilization, in terms of values is what kind of
a life it affords, not for a few but for all of its citizens.

The term culture, as used by anthropologists, ethnologists,
and social scientists generally, does not, of course, coincide
with the use of the word among the American working-
classes, for whom it constitutes a description of the middle-
class culture to which they so devoutly aspire. True Story
Magazine, the favorite magazine of the proletariat, circula-
tion 1,597,000, has a story about a poor boy, who marries a
banker's daughter and makes good. On first being intro-
duced into the banker's house he says: "It was my first
experience in a home, where culture, ease and breeding were
a part of everyday life." Household Magazine, circulation
2,006,000, which is read by farm and small town women, has
a page of advice to girls, conducted by Gladys Carrol Hast-
ings, author of As the Earth Turns. Miss Hastings describes
how a daughter of the rich is forced because of the depression
to live on a farm and to do her own work. Miss Hastings
says: "I choose not to stress how tired she was each night
. . . how she longed for the ease and culture of other asso-
ciations, how little her few neighbors satisfied her."

CLASS CULTURES

The popular and proletarian use of the word "culture"
points to a significant fact; the fact that, contrary to popular
pre-war conceptions, we do have classes in the United States,
and that any examination of our present American culture
will, of necessity, break up into an examination of a number
of class cultures.

Two problems face the would-be examiner of contem-

81

porary American culture. The first is to ascertain how many
classes there are and the second is to find a measuring stick
for the culture of each of these different classes. Both are nice
problems.

It is noteworthy that there are no names, used in ordinary
speech to characterize social classes, unless "racketeer" and
"sucker" can be considered to be in this category. In which
case we have not the Marxian antithesis of the workers versus
the bosses, but the strictly American antithesis of suckers
versus racketeers, complicated by the fact that most Ameri-
cans are racketeers and suckers at one and the same time.
Workers refer to themselves as "the working-class of peo-
ple," executives discuss the white-collar class, ad-men refer
to mass and class publications, fashion analysts study the
high, medium, popular, and low style woman. Common speech
is of little help in differentiating such social classes as we
have, nor are the professional social scientists very useful.
With the exception of Veblen's books and of the magnificent
study Middletown made by the Lynds in 1927, which de-
scribes minutely the culture of the working and business
classes of a typical American city, the social scientists have
added very little of any importance to what we know about
the stratification of the American population and about
American culture.

The most valuable sources of information we have about
the economic and cultural levels of the American population
are such government statistics as the Army intelligence tests
and income-tax returns, and the unpublished studies of con-
sumer behavior on file in magazine offices and in advertising
agencies. One of the best of these studies is the work of
Daniel Starch. This study divides American families into in-
come groups, computed in multiples of one-thousand dollars.
Since this chapter expects to lean somewhat on Mr. Starch's
researches, it will for the sake of brevity divide Americans
into three economic classes, each of which proves on exam-

82

ination to have a fairly distinct cultural pattern. Without
bothering about exact names for these classes, since no idio-
matic or exact names exist, we may refer to them briefly as
the rich, the middle class and the poor.

The poor, those having incomes of less than $2,000 a year,
constituted in 1925, seventy-seven per cent of the population.
Most of them live below the minimum comfort level. The
richest members of this class can afford a minimum health
and decency standard of living; the poorer members of this
class cannot. During our most prosperous years, from 1922
to 1929, the majority of Americans were living on less than
70 per cent of the minimum health and decency budgets
worked out by the United States Government bureaus. Life-
long economic security is rare. This class is not of much in-
terest to advertisers or editors. The Daniel Starch studies
show that only 34 per cent of the circulation of twenty
women's magazines goes to this group.

The middle class, those having incomes between $2,000
and $5,000 a year can afford comforts. Severe ill-health or
prolonged depression periods, to mention only two of the
most important causes, can ruin the economic security of
middle-class families. Nevertheless, it may be said that life-
long economic security is within the grasp of some of the
more fortunate and thrifty members of this class.

The rich, those having incomes of over $5,000 a year, are
the class that pays income taxes. Even the poorest enjoy
comforts and a few luxuries. With the richer members of this
class, economic security becomes a possibility, and is, in a
considerable percentage of cases, attained.

There remains the problem of finding a measuring stick
with which to measure the culture of these three classes; the
poor, the middle class, and the rich. Culture has many as-
pects; it is necessary within the space of this book to select
one of these aspects. Clark Wissler, the well-known anthro-
pologist, says in his book Man and Culture: "The study of

83

culture has come to be regarded more and more, in recent
decades, as the study of modes of thought, and of tradition,
as well as of modes of action or customs." It is the modes of
thought that concern us in this chapter. It is more difficult
to find out what people are thinking than to discover what
they are doing, but it is also more fascinating.

THE MAGAZINE MEASURING-STICK

The public's response to an art offers, perhaps, the best
clue as to what is going on in people's minds. There are, as
it happens, three popular arts in the United States, which are
enjoyed to some extent by all classes; they are the press, the
talkies and the radio. The talkies probably have most influ-
ence, but the press is for obvious reasons easier to examine and
measure; it is a better statistical foil. Moreover, in our maga-
zine-press, in which each magazine is to some extent aimed
at a particular class of readers, our class culture is more ac-
curately reflected than in either the talkies or in radio pro-
grams.

The only serious drawback to using the magazine-press as
a measuring stick for the culture of our three arbitrarily
selected classes is that a considerable section of the wage-earn-
ing class, who constitute over 75 per cent of the population,
do not read magazines very much because they cannot afford
them. Mr. Starch's studies show that the most popular mag-
azine of the rich, The Saturday Evening Post, is read by 6j
per cent of all the families having over $5,000 a year, while
True Story, the most popular magazine among the proletariat,
is read by only 14 per cent of all the families having under
$2,000 a year. Of the 14 per cent who read True Story, over
two-thirds have incomes of $1,000 to $2,000 a year, while
approximately one-third have incomes of $1,000 a year, or
less.

The extent to which the magazines do and do not reflect

84

the culture of any specific economic class is shown in the
following chart, based on Mr. Starch's figures. The reader
will observe that all of the magazines cited have circulations
in all three economic classes, and that most of the circulation
lies in the middle-class group. To find magazines which rep-
resent the rich as versus the middle class, it is necessary to
seek examples among the so-called class magazines. On this
chart, three magazines; Harper's Bazaar, Harper's Magazine,
and Arts & Decoration, belong to the class magazine group.
Each of these magazines has over 45 per cent of its circula-
tion among the rich. In order to strengthen our sample of
magazines catering to the rich, another class magazine, Na-
tion's Business, has been added to the list of magazines to be
studied.

WHO READS THE MAGAZINES?

The number of magazines which might be said to appeal
in the main to the poor, and which also have large circula-
tions, is disappointingly small. Only two magazines, True
Story, which is proletarian in flavor, and Household, which
is not, have over one-third of their readers among the poor.
In seeking to fortify the number of magazines which might
be expected to reflect the culture of the poor, two maga-
zines were added to the list; The American Weekly, the il-
lustrated Hearst Sunday supplement, which has one of the
largest circulations of any periodical in the country, and
Photoplay, the largest circulation movie magazine. Examina-
tion proved however that Photoplay is probably to be con-
sidered as a middle-class magazine.

It might be noted in passing that, in the main, the poor
have no press. We have discovered no large circulation mag-
azine which has over 45 per cent of its circulation among
the poor. One suspects that magazines like True Story cater to

8*

WHO READS THE MAGAZINES?

Rich
Middle Clue
Poor

MASAZINE Art* And Decoration
KEADERS: Harper's Magazine

Harper's Bazaar

Saturday Evening Pot

Photoplay

Cosmopolitan

American Magazine
Woman's Home Companion

Liberty

Household

True Story

AY** ACE DISTRIBUTION FOR II MAGAZINES:
AWFULLY EMPLOYED, 1919

D

$ 5 ,000 and over

$0-1999

86%

the one -tenth of the working-class consisting of organized
and skilled workers who can afford some comforts. One sus-
pects further that the other nine-tenths of the wage as versus
salary earners, although they may read the magazines, have,
strictly speaking, no large circulation press at all.

86

THE EDITOR-READER RELATION

The advertising business has frequently been defined in
this book as consisting of the newspaper and magazine press,
the radio, the advertising agencies, and a considerable section
of the talkie, paper, and printing industries. To the magazine
editor and the ad-man a magazine consists of two parts: ad-
vertisements and filler. The filler is designed to carry the
advertisements. With rare exceptions, no way has so far been
discovered of getting the public to pay for advertisements
presented without filler. Hence the filler.

This strictly commercial point of view of the magazine
editor, the circulation manager, and the ad-man is not the
reader's point of view. The reader thinks of a magazine in
terms of fiction, articles, features, editorials, and advertise-
ments. While he seldom buys the magazine for the ads, he
may enjoy certain ads even more than he enjoys the contents
of the periodical. In addition to hunting out the particular
things in the magazine which appeal to him as an individual,
or which he hopes to find tolerably palatable, he is more or

(less aware of the personality of the magazine. Its slant on
things is as well known to him as the slant of a family friend,
and although he may not agree with the slant, he enjoys
savoring of it. From the reader's point of view, therefore,
one can add at least one more category to the commercial
categories of the editor and ad-man. One can say that the
magazine consists not only of advertisements and filler, but
that it also has an editorial element, that there is in fact, in
most cases, a certain editor-reader relation, which the reader
is quite cognizant of.

(That the editor-reader relation, just referred to, exists not
only in the mind of the reader, but in the mind of the
editor as well, is shown by the following statement made by
Gertrude B. Lane, assistant editor of Woman's Home Com-

87

panion. In a memorandum stating her objections to the Tug-
well Bill, Miss Lane says:

"I admit quite frankly that my selfish interests are involved. I
have spent thirty years of my life building up a magazine which I
have tried to make of real service to the women of America, and
I have invested all my savings in the company which publishes this
magazine. The magazine business and the newspapers, rightly or
wrongly, have been made possible through national advertising.
Great industries have been developed and millions of people em-
ployed."

Miss Lane's angle is interesting. Is advertising perhaps the
culture, the swamp-muck, if you will, that exists to nourish
this lily of service? If Miss Lane is correct, the question that
will interest the magazine reader is not how thick is' the muck,
but how tall and fragrant is the lily? An examination of the
January, 1934, issue of Woman's Home Companion will
perhaps answer this question.

SERVICE VERSUS SELLING

In looking for the service-angle suggested by Miss Lane,
the writers felt that a correct estimate of the amount of
service rendered the reader could perhaps best be found in
editorials and articles, rather than in the fiction. Fiction was
also considered in relation to service, and the results will be
referred to later in this chapter. The concentration on edi-
torials and articles proved, however, to offer the most useful
index of service. The issue of the Woman's Home Compan-
ion examined contained in its editorials and articles three
items which could be listed under this head.

Item I. Article "What Mothers Want To Know" (5^ inches).
The writer, a physician, starts out by saying: "I- wonder if we city
doctors write about the things that mothers want to know. At

88

least sixty per cent of the mothers' letters received by Woman's
Home Companion come from small cities, towns, or rural com-
munities, which have practically no modern facilities, no hospitals
or clinics for babies, well or sick, no pediatrists. Many of the let-
ters are pathetic."

Item II. Editorial "The Mighty Effort" (8 inches). This edi-
torial urges Americans to support President Roosevelt's program.
The dangers of this program can, in the opinion of the editors be
avoided, "if the true American spirit prevails." The true American
spirit consists in moderation. Owen D. Young is quoted as saying:
"We must watch them that threaten us, both from inaction and
over-action, not that we may punish them, but that we may pre-
vent them from ruining us and themselves as well. It is unneces-
sary for producers to unite into a trust ... it is unnecessary for
labor to unite in unions ... it is unnecessary for consumers to
unite in such a way as to threaten savings and labor employed in
production."

Item III. Letter. Signed, C. R. J., Oregon, entitled by the edi-
tors, "Sensible Protest Against Frills" (8 l /z inches). Criticizes the
home economics classes attended by country and small town chil-
dren, in which the pupils are taught: "How to give orders to a
maid and butler ... to put fancy frills on a chop bone, and to
cook steaks." The writer notes that most of the parents of these
children afford steaks and chops very rarely, and makes sensible
suggestions as to what a home economics course for country chil-
dren should contain.

Of the 1,404 inches devoted to editorials and articles, 22
inches, or about two-thirds of a page, is devoted to service.
But the lily of service which raises its pure head in a naughty
world should not be measured in inches or percentages alone.
What does the two-thirds of a page devoted to service in the
Woman's Home Companion net the reader? A reader makes
a sensible statement, so sensible that one concludes that it
might be an excellent thing for editors to turn over their
editorial space to their shrewder readers. As far as the editors
are concerned they have only two things to say to the reader.

First: In a general editorial about recovery, they point out
to their readers, who are consumers, that "it is unnecessary
for consumers to unite in such a way as to threaten savings
and labor employed in production." In suggesting that its
readers do not become politically active as consumers, the
Companion would seem to be serving its own interests rather
than those of its readers. Second: They promise in the future
to help the women living in small towns with their maternity
problems. Excellent as this is, a promise of service does not
constitute a service. If the Woman's Home Companion ful-
fills its promise, this fulfillment will constitute a genuine
service to the reader.

Examination of the other twelve magazines selected for
study is somewhat more reassuring than examination of the
Woman's Home Companion. The service element of the
other magazines as measured by the editorials and articles
ranges as high as 88 or 79 per cent in contrast with the
Woman's Home Companion's 1.5 per cent. The complete
list of space devoted to service is as follows: Saturday Eve-
ning Post, 88 per cent; Nation's Business, 79 per cent; Ameri-
can Magazine, 41 per cent; Harper's Magazine, 37 per cent;
Cosmopolitan, 28 per cent; Liberty, 24 per cent; True Story,
1 6 per cent; Household Magazine, u per cent; Harper's
Bazaar, 2 per cent; Woman's Home Companion, i.y per
cent; American Weekly, .7 per cent; Photoplay, o; Arts &
Decoration, o.

SERVICE AS SOPHISTICATION

To make sure that we are doing justice to the Woman's
Home Companion, it might be well to state at this point
what items the writers have considered to have a service angle.
An examination of the thirteen selected magazines caused the
writers to re-define service as sophistication, and specifically

90

sophistication about economic and political affairs. Four
kinds of items were included under Sophistication:

1) Any reference to recovery or depression was considered to
constitute sophistication, since it may be considered an index of
interest in reality as opposed to fantasy.

2) Any recognition that an economic or political situation was
complex rather than simple was also considered to constitute so-
phistication. A mention of three or four factors in a situation
rather than one or two was considered to be complex as opposed
to simple.

3) Any facts which did not bear directly on the financial or
emulative interest of the specific class of readers to whom the mag-
azine is addressed, were considered to constitute sophistication.
Note: Only two or three examples were found.

4) Any criticism or satire of our contemporary culture and
society which might be considered to apply not to a specific insti-
tution but to the society as a whole.

The standards set up as sophistication are not high. Any
truly sophisticated presentation of an economic or political
situation would usually have to cover more than three or
four factors in the situation. Many of the articles in the
Saturday Evening "Post, Nation's Business, and in such maga-
zines as the Nation, New Republic, and Fortune, rate well
above this three-or-four-factors-in-a-situation level. It has
been the effort of the writers to include under sophistication
everything which could possibly be included under this cat-
egory. Most if not all of the rays of hope, inspiration or com-
fort extended to the readers by the editors it has been pos-
sible to pick up under one of the four categories used.

When the results of the sophistication survey are averaged,
it is found that the average magazine devotes 24.4 per cent
of its editorial and article space to making the contemporary
economic and political world which so notably affects the
destinies of its readers somewhat comprehensible. The amount

of sophistication is clearly one of the important elements in
the editor-reader relation of the magazine. The extent to
which the sophistication element in each of the magazines
studied has vitality or sincerity, will be considered when the
contents of individual magazines are described.

The sophistication survey shows one notable fact; that
magazines specifically for women are low in respect to so-
phistication. Remembering that 24 per cent is the sophistica-
tion average for thirteen magazines, consider the degree of
sophistication of the following magazines catering mainly to
women: Household Magazine, n per cent; Harper's Bazaar,
2 per cent; Woman's Home Companion, 1.5 per cent; Photo-
play, o; and Arts & Decoration, o. Harper's Bazaar, a fashion
magazine; Photoplay, a movie magazine; and Arts & Decora-
tion, an interior decoration magazine, are, of course, special-
ized magazines, with no interest in economics or politics.
Nevertheless, the line-up seems to have some significance.
Contrast the women's magazine sophistication record, for
example, with the sophistication record of the magazines
which have an exclusive or heavy male readership; Saturday
Evening Post, 88 per cent; Nation's Business, 79 per cent;
and the American Magazine, 41 per cent. The claim that the
contents of women's magazines reflect the provincialism and
low intellectual status of women was made in an article in
the December, 13, 1933, issue of the New Republic. This
article provoked a spirited rebuttal from no less a person
than Carolyn B. Ulrich, Chief of the Periodicals Division of
the New York Public Library, New York City. Miss Ulrich
says, among other things:

"Who are the owners and editors of women's magazines? You
will find that men predominate in the executive offices and on their
editorial staffs. Would it not appear that we are still bound to what
men think desirable? Is that what most women want? And are not
these magazines really mediums for salesmanship, almost trade

92

journals? Of the first importance in these magazines is the adver-
tising. The subject matter comes second. The advertisements pay
for the producing of the magazine. The subject matter, aside from
a few sentimental stories, covers those interests that belong to
woman's sphere. There, also, the purpose is to foster buying for the
home and child. The entire plan of these magazines is based on the
man's interest in its commercial success."

PERVERSION OF EDITOR-READER RELATION

In one of Miss Ulrich's sentences, we find the clue to the
nature and character of our present women's magazines.
Miss Ulrich says: "The subject matter . . . stories aside,
covers those interests that belong to woman's sphere. There,
also, the purpose is to foster buying." Miss Ulrich is correct.
If the contents of the women's magazines are examined, it
will be found that the editors devote from 48 to 15 per cent
of the total contents of the magazine to ballyhooing certain
classes of products or specifically named products; in short,
to peddling something over the counter, just as advertise-
ments do. The five magazines catering mainly to women,
which rank very much below the average in respect to so-
phistication, rank highest in respect to the amount of editorial
space devoted to salesmanship. The proportion of the total
space in the women's magazines devoted to editorial adver-
tising is as follows: Arts & Decoration, 48 per cent; Harper's
Bazaar, 34 per cent; Photoplay, 24 per cent; Household, 18
per cent; Woman's Home Companion, 15 per cent. Harper's
Bazaar devotes 26 of its non-advertising pages to mentioning
the names of 523 stores and products.

The nature and character of our women's magazines be-
comes clear if one realizes that in these magazines the editor-
reader relation has been perverted. Where this relation has
vitality and sincerity, the readers get from the magazine
something not wholly commercial. They do not merely get

93

enough filler or entertainment to make them swallow the
advertising; they are given something definite and humanly
valuable, a friendly relation to the editor, who is or should
be, from the reader's point of view, a person whose specific
job it is to know more about affairs in general than the
reader can take time to know. An editor's analysis of a situa-
tion, his judgment about it, have some weight with the
reader, just as a friend's analysis of a situation and judgment
about it have. However, where the editor-reader relation is
perverted, as in the women's magazines, the editor does not
give the reader something; he takes something away from the
reader. It is a case of the right hand giveth and the left hand
taketh away. The left hand of the editor takes away from the
reader part of the non-advertising or subject matter space of
the magazine which is presumably what the reader pays for,
and devotes it to editorial advertising. The right hand of the
editor gives the reader something humanly valuable; sophis-
tication. In the five magazines catering primarily to women,
as the accompanying chart shows, the editorial left hand, the
hand which takes, is the active hand.

EDITORIAL ADVERTISING

Editorial advertising in the accompanying chart includes
three categories. In the order of their importance, that is, in
the order of the amount of space devoted to them, they are as
follows:

Item i: Pushing of advertised products.

Item 2: Pushing of sales of, or subscriptions to the magazine.

Item 3: Editorials or articles, pushing buying in general, or
pushing the buying of certain classes of products, which may or
mav not appear in the magazine's advertisements.

Of the total space of the thirteen magazines, 10.9 per cent
is, on the average, devoted to pushing products; 2.6 per cent

94

SELLING VERSUS SERVICE

SELLING SERVICE

OR EDITORIAL OR EDITORIAL

ADVERTISING SOPHISTICATION

I 0.8%

4%

mmt
Liber ty

Cosmopolitan
Saturday Evening Post
Nation's Business
American Magazine
American Weekly

is devoted to pushing the magazine; and one per cent to push-
ing buying generally. House ads, pushing the sale of the
magazine are familiar, and hardly need illustration. The push-
ing of advertised products is also more or less familiar. A few
examples will probably suffice:

Artificial Silks

"I sometimes think the women of today aren't sufficiently thank-
ful for or appreciative of the fabric marvels which are theirs. . . .
As a miracle, for instance, doesn't artificial silk answer every re-
quirement of the word?" (True Story: "Sheer Fabrics That Would
Make Cleopatra Jealous.")

95

Oil Heaters

"Where lack of a basement makes installation of the usual type
of cellar plant impossible . . . there are heat cabinets available.
. . . With one of these oil heaters in a room, the old fire-building,
stove-nursing, ash-carrying, half -warmed days are over." (True
Story: "Is Your Home Old-Fashioned in Its Heating Apparatus?")

Canned Meats

"In looking around to see just what I could discover in canned
meats and chickens, I found great variations in the size of their
containers." (Household Magazine: "A Short Cut to Meats The
Can-Opener.")

Condensed Milk

"She (my grandmother) tried cow's milk, the best she could
obtain, but without any improvement. In desperation she finally
tried a spoonful of the new condensed milk, a recent invention that
a newcomer in the gold camp had brought from the East. The baby
loved it." (True Story: "From My Grandmother's Diary.")

Electric Lamps

"She spent many months of patient searching for just the right
lamps at just the right prices. Lamps that would give the perfect
angle of light. . . ." (Woman's Home Companion: "A Healthful
Luxury.")

Hotels

"No place in the world has such sparkle as New York at this
time of year. Come for the fun of shopping ... to see the new
ballets ... to enjoy the restaurant life of these new days of the
wine list. . . . For help in choosing your hotel, write to the Travel
Bureau." (Harper's Bazaar: "New York at Christmas.")

Tea Table Accessories

"All of our social existence is tied up in a few familiar rituals.
A hostess is known by her tea tables and dinner tables. Marriages
and births and political victories and personal achievements are

celebrated there. . . . Occasionally something definite and perma-
nent arises phoenix-like from a passing mode. Lines that appeared
as startling innovations on the tea tray of some smart hostess grad-
ually become familiar in decorative treatment and in architecture.
So a new style is created." (Arts & Decoration: "A Portfolio of
Modern Accessories.")

Somewhat more subtle and interesting are editorials and
advertisements pushing buying generally, or the buying of
certain classes of products.

"A Call to Colors for the American Male"

"The pioneering hard-fisted, hard-boiled American Male will cheer
campaign speeches on the benefits of rugged individualism and
whistle laissez faire, whenever he has to keep up his courage in a
financial crisis. He will grow turgidly eloquent on the benefits
both to himself and society of doing just as he sees fit when and if
he pleases. He will battle to his last breath against any code pre-
scribing a uniform way of running his business, auditing his ac-
counts, educating his children or divorcing his wives. Any form of
regulation is to him a symptom of Bolshevik tyranny. But the one
moment when he is terrified of freedom is when he buys his clothes.
He is -more afraid of wearing a bright orange necktie to bis office
than of carrying a red flag in a communist parade" (Harper's
Bazaar.}

"Bare Without Jewels"

"To the great dressmakers and to the women who make fashion
a matter for prayer and meditation, and especially to foreign women,
we Americans are as incomplete as the vermilionless painting.
. . . Lean back in a stall in Covent Garden on a Ballets Russe night
and compare the jewels you see with those worn at the average
American soiree. Foreigners cannot understand our modesty in this
regard. How extraordinary, they say, that you Americans who have
money are content with the small bracelet, the one string of pearls,
the nice ring or two. . . .

These simple molded gowns of black or jewel colored velvets,

97

these dark green sheaths, these brilliant columns of stiff white satin
crave the barbaric fire of emeralds, diamonds, rubies. . . . For the
last twenty years we have been genteel and timid about jewelry.
It was not always thus. Let those who feel shocked by this modern
splendor remember that their aristocratic grandmamas blazed with
dog collars and tiaras. And who are we to say that the Queen of
Sheba was not a lady?" (Harper's Bazaar.)

"Contempora"

"A contemporary chair or service plate can range as far in cost
and beauty as those of Louis the XlVth or any other period.
Chromium is more expensive than no chromium, beveled glass is
more expensive than glass that is not beveled" (And a vote for
Wintergreen is a vote for Wintergreen.) Arts & Decoration.

Perhaps it is because editorial advertising is newer than
pure advertising that the tone of editorial advertising is often
so brash. In Arts & Decoration, the magazine which has the
highest percentage of editorial advertising, the situation has
gone so far that the strident voice of salesmanship concen-
trates in the subject matter, while the advertisements are
comparatively dignified and serene.

The editor-reader relation is the vital core of the magazine.
The study of thirteen magazines shows that this relation has
its credit and debit side; that it is at once an Angel Gabriel
and a Lucifer. In short, it is a most human relation, in which
the itchiness of the editor, eager to attract more advertising
and revenue, competes with his desire to be humanly useful.

No description of the magazines would be complete with-
out a reference to the advertisements, which in contradis-
tinction to the editorial advertisements, are openly and un-
hypocritically concerned with selling. Our statistics show that
on the average 30.6 per cent, or a little less than a third of
the magazine is devoted to straight advertising, while on the
average 43.5 per cent, or a little over two-fifths of the maga-
zine, is devoted to straight advertising and editorial advertis-

ing combined. This 43.5 per cent is the Selling-end of the
magazine. The other 54.6 per cent is devoted to what is gen-
erally known as filler and what for the purposes of this study
we have defined as Sophistication and Entertainment.

MAJOR ADVERTISING APPEALS: FEAR, SEX, AND EMULATION

It is perhaps worth noting that the five magazines catering
mainly to women rank highest not only in respect to the
proportion of space in the total contents of the magazine
devoted to editorial advertising, but also in the proportion
of space devoted to selling. The amount of space devoted to
selling averages 43 per cent in the thirteen magazines and
62 per cent in the case of the five women's magazines.

Advertisements are, to the student of a culture, one of the
most revealing sections of the magazine. A great many studies
of advertising have been made. First, they reflect, as in a
mirror, the material culture of a people. Second, they throw
light on economic levels and class stratification. With the ma-
terial culture of the United States we are not, in this chapter,
primarily concerned. The extent to which advertisements re-
flect class stratifications has already been mentioned, and will
be referred to again in more detail. For the moment, we shall
limit ourselves to asking one question: To what extent do the
advertisements in these thirteen magazines give the reader
useful information about the product? The success of the
magazine, Ballyhoo, and its imitators, showed that many
people found some ads absurd, and perhaps annoying, and
that they were glad to have them kidded. Not all advertis-
ing, however, is of this character. The question is what pro-
portion of the ads are useful, and what proportion are natural
material for satire?

It was necessary to find a simple measuring stick. An
analysis of the advertisements showed that they appealed to
many different instincts on the part of the reader, to fear,

99

to sex, to emulation, to the desire to make money, the desire
to save money, and so forth. Moreover, a single advertisement
often combines several appeals. It soon became apparent that
the three major appeals of the ads, those that appeared most
frequently, were fear, sex, and emulation. It was therefore
decided to break up the ads into two categories: i) those that
unmistakably contained one of these three appeals, regardless
of what other appeals the individual ad might also contain;
2) ads which did not contain one of these three appeals, and
which were called straight ads. In the main, it might be said
that the straight ads contain more description of the prod-
uct than the fear-sex-or-emulation ads. This latter type of
ad is more concerned with creating atmosphere than with
describing the product.

What the writers mean by advertisements appealing to the
instincts of fear or sex hardly requires explanation. Emula-
tion, however, needs to be defined. As used in this chapter,
emulation is equivalent to snobbism, it is the keeping-up-
with-the-Joneses motif, the desire on the part of the indi-
vidual to prove to his neighbors that his social status is
enviable. In short, it is a particular form of competitiveness,
relating not to personal charm or financial rating, but simply
and strictly to success in maintaining or achieving social
status.

An examination of the ads showed that, on the average, 39
per cent of the ads are fear-sex-and-emulation ads, while 61
per cent are straight ads. The minimum percentage of fear-
sex-and-emulation ads was 6 per cent; the maximum, 66 per
cent. Three out of the four magazines that reflect the cul-
ture of the rich, the Class "A" magazines, were low in re-
spect to fear-sex-and-emulation ads. The statistics are as fol-
lows: Harper's Bazaar, 57 per cent; Nation's Business, 28
per cent; Arts & Decoration, 23 per cent; and Harper's
Magazine, 17 per cent. No equally clear correlation appears
in regard to the magazines which rank high in respect to fear-

100

sex-and-emulation appeals. Nevertheless, it may perhaps be
said that a low percentage of fear-sex-and-emulation ads is
characteristic of the Class "A" magazines. This correlation
may perhaps to some extent reflect the sophistication of this
class; what it probably reflects in the main is the good man-
ners of the rich; the desire for good tone, as versus vulgarity
or stridency.

A further correlation between the fear-sex-and-emulation
ads and class stratification appears, when we consider the per-
centage of advertising space devoted to each one of these
three appeals in the various magazines. The appeal to fear
predominates in seven magazines, which are, generally speak-
ing, the magazines of the lower income-levels, while the
appeal to emulation predominates in six magazines of the
upper income-levels. In no magazine is the appeal to sex
dominant over the appeal to fear or to emulation. The follow-
ing graph shows not only what percentage of the total adver-
tising space is devoted to appeals to fear, sex, and emulation,
but which is the dominant appeal in each magazine.

A little reflection shows that the dominance of the fear
appeal in the magazines of the lower income -levels and the
dominance of emulation in the magazines of the upper in-
come-levels is quite natural. The poor cannot afford emula-
tion; the rich can. Moreover, the poor are used to fear and
insecurity, with them the reference to fear is not an alien
thing. As is the case with primitive peoples, they live sur-
rounded by fears.

The fact that sex proves in the advertisements of these
typical American magazines to be less powerful as an appeal
than either fear or emulation is interesting. One grants easily,
without being able to prove it, that fear is probably a stronger
motivation than sex, in all societies. The question remains
whether emulation is in all societies a stronger motive than
sex, or whether it is merely in American society that emula-

101

FEAR, SEX AND EMULATION APPEALS
IN THE ADVERTISEMENTS

BUYING
MAGAZINES FEAR SEX EMULATION CUASS

Average for 13 Magazines: HH 15% HI 9% BBS 14%
Harper's Bazaar

Saturday Evening Pose B9B

Arcs And Decoration.

American Magazine fiHHH I tlsilia ft

Nation's Business A

Harper's Magazine BHHH mS A

Woman's Home Companion,

True Story

American Weekly B C

Household HBHBH I C

tion is a powerful motivation, while sex is a weak motiva-
tion.

Before leaving the discussion of the ads to consider the
section of the magazines devoted to what we choose to call
Entertainment, it may be in point to make a few concluding
but scattering comments concerning advertisements.

First: We have seen that the majority of the ads, 61 per
cent, are straight ads, dealing in the main with the product,
rather than fear-sex-or-emulation ads, which are interested
mainly in creating emotion or atmosphere. A qualifying note

IO2

is necessary at this point. It would be inaccurate to assume
that 6 1 per cent of the ads devote themselves mainly to de-
scribing the product. The majority of these ads devote more
space to describing the effect upon the buyer of using the
product than to describing the product itself. Very elaborate
statistical work would have been necessary to document this
observation, and because of the difficulties involved, no work
of this character was done.

Second: With two exceptions, advertisements of products
that appear in the magazines of the rich, the middle classes
and the poor, tend to be the same; that is, to have the same
words and copy, the assumption of the ad-men being that we
Americans are all brothers and sisters under the skin. Of the
two conspicuous exceptions, one has already been noted,
namely: the fact that fear appeals predominate in the lower
income-brackets, while emulation appeals dominate in the
upper income-brackets. The other exception is that the fear
appeals in the lower income-brackets are somewhat cruder
than the fear appeals in the upper income-brackets. Specifi-
cally, there is more appeal to fear of parents for the safety
and well-being of their children. Illnesses and discomforts
from which both adults and children may suffer are in many
instances embellished with photographs of wan, reproachful
children.

(1) "Mother, Why Am I so Sore and Uncomfortable?"
(Waldorf Toilet Tissue ad in True Story.)

(2) "Scolded For Mistakes That Father and Mother
Made." (Postum General Foods ad in Household Magazine.)

(3) "And Don't Go Near Betty Ann She's a Colds-
Susceptible." (Vick's ad in Women's Home Companion.)

Third: An examination of the advertising and also of the
editorial contents of the magazines shows that the commercial
interests back of the magazines treat women and the poor with
scant respect, while men and the rich have a somewhat better
rating.

103

III. The Ad-Man's Pseudoculture

It is perhaps desirable once more to say what we mean by
the ad-man and what we mean by the pseudoculture. We
have tried to show in the preceding chapter that the com-
mercial American magazines are essentially advertising busi-
nesses. Hence the editors of these magazines may be, with
some minor qualification, correctly characterized as adver-
tising people motivated by considerations of profit.

But a society does not and cannot live solely by acquisi-
tive and profit-motivations. If this were possible the joint
enterprise of the advertising writer and the commercial
magazine editor, which is, by and large, to promote and
construct a purely acquisitive culture, would be a stable and
successful enterprise.

It is nothing of the sort. Frankly the writers started with
a pessimistic hypothesis, viz.: that the acquisitive-emula-
tive cultural formula had so debauched the American people
that they really liked and approved this formula as worked
out by the mass and class magazines. The writers expected
on examining the magazines to find the acquisitive culture
dominant in all of them, and to find that in the majority of
cases this culture existed undiluted by any admixture of the
older, traditional American culture. If they had found what
they expected to find, they would have been obliged to
accept the conclusion that the ad-man's acquisitive-emula-
tive culture is an organic thing, something capable of sustain-
ing human life. The findings did not show this. On the con-
trary, they showed beyond the possibility of a doubt that
the acquisitive culture cannot stand on its own feet, that
it does not satisfy, that it is, in fact, merely a pseudoculture.

The magazines live by the promotion of acquisitive and
emulative motivations but in order to make the enterprise in
the least tolerable or acceptable to their readers it is necessary
to mix with this emulative culture, the ingredients, in vary-

104

ing proportions, of the older American culture in which sex,
sophistication, sentiment, the arts, sciences, etc., play major
roles. Only three of the thirteen magazines examined are able
to build and hold a circulation on the basis of an editorial
content consisting solely of acquisitive and emulative appeals.
All of these three are in one way or another special cases.
Arts & Decoration, Harper's Bazaar, and Photoplay are all
three essentially parasitic fashion magazines. The first two are
enterprises in the exploitation of the rich, who constitute over
50 per cent of their circulation. Photoplay, a middle class
gossip and fashion sheet, is, by and large, simply a collection
agent for the acquisitive and emulative wants built up by the
movies which, as we have seen, function predominantly as a
want-building institution in the American culture.

In other words the business of publishing commercial
magazines is a parasitic industry. The ad-man's pseudoculture
parasites on the older, more organic culture, just as the ad-
vertising business is itself a form of economic parasitism; in
Veblen's language, it represents one of the ways in which
profit-motivated business "conscientiously withdraws effi-
ciency from the productivity of industry," this "conscien-
tious sabotage" being necessary to prevent the disruptive
force of applied science from shattering the chains of the
profit system. It is, we feel, important to note that this
phenomenon of parasitism or sabotage extends not merely to
the economy considered as a mechanism of production and
distribution but to the culture considered as a system of
values and motivations by which people live.

But the American people do not like this pseudoculture,
cannot live by it, and, indeed, never have lived by it. The
magazines analyzed, which were published during this the
fifth year of a depression, show that fiction writers, sensitive
to public opinion, often definitely repudiate this culture.
Americans tend, at the moment, if the magazine culture can
be considered to be a mirror of popular feeling, to look, not

forward into the future, but backward into the past. They
are trying to discover by what virtues, by what pattern of
life, the Americans of earlier days succeeded in being admir-
able people, and in sustaining a life, which, if it did not have
ease and luxury, did seem to have dignity and charm. Al-
though the main drift of desire is toward the past, there are
other drifts. Some editors and readers even envision revolu-
tion and the substitution of a new culture for the acquisitive
and the traditional American culture.

THE BATTLE OF THE CULTURES

In the older, more humane culture, sex and sophistication
are the major elements. In the artificial profit-motivated
pseudoculture by which the commercial magazine lives and
tries to make its readers live, emulation tends to replace sex
as a major interest, whereas sophistication dwindles and ulti-
mately disappears. The following table exhibits a striking
inverse ratio:

COMMERCIALISM VERSUS SOPHISTICATION

Per cent of editorial and Per cent of total

article space devoted -magazine space devoted
Magazine to sophistication to editorial advertisements
Saturday Evening Post 88% 3%
Nation's Business 79% 8%
American Magazine 4 J % 2 %
Harper's Magazine 37% 7%
Cosmopolitan 28% 3%
Liberty 24% 4%
True Story 16% 6%
Household 1 1 % 1 8 %
Harper's Bazaar 2% 34%
Woman's Home Com-
panion *>5% I 5%

106

COMMERCIALISM VERSUS SOPHISTICATION- (Continued)

Per cent of editorial and Per cent of total

article space devoted magazine space devoted

Magazine to sophistication to editorial advertisements

American Weekly .7 % i / G

Photoplay .0% 24%

Arts & Decoration .0% 48%

In the Saturday Evening Post we find the maximum of
editorial and article space, 88 per cent, devoted to sophistica-
tion. By sophistication we mean a realistic attempt by the
editors to deal with the facts and problems which constitute
the everyday concerns of their readers. The Post devotes a
minimum of space to editorial advertising. Yet, paradoxically
enough, the Saturday Evening Post is the greatest advertising
medium in the world. This would seem to indicate that edi-
torial advertising is to a magazine what makeup is to a plain
woman. Not that the Post is in any true sense a satisfactory
and creative cultural medium. The most that can be said for
the Post is that it functions with some sincerity and effec-
tiveness as the organ of a specific economic and social class.

At the bottom of this dual ascending and descending scale,
we find Arts & Decoration with a sophistication rating of
zero and 48 per cent of its total space devoted to editorial
advertising. Obviously, Arts & Decoration represents the
phenomenon of pure commercial parasitism. It is the organ of
nothing and nobody except its publishers and advertisers, and
it holds its 18,000 readers by a mixture of flattery and insult,
which magazine publishers, it seems, consider to be the
proper formula to be used on the new-rich and the social
climber. The slogan would seem to be: Mannerless readers de-
serve a mannerless magazine.

There is another inverse ratio in which this battle of the
cultures is apparent. In the magazine literature of the pre-

107

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109

war days, men and women grew up, fell in love, married,
had children, and lived more or less happily ever after. Among
current magazine examples we find that the American Maga-
zine is still reasonably confident that this biological pattern
is fundamental to human life. In 78 per cent of its fiction
content sex sentimental sex is a major appeal. Signifi-
cantly, we note that only three per cent of the American
Magazine's non-advertising space is devoted to promoting
emulative motivations. With the Saturday Evening Post, a
magazine which goes to a somewhat wealthier class of read-
ers than the American, the emphasis on sex has lessened, and
the interest in the acquisitive society is much more pro-
nounced. Only 28 per cent of the Post's fiction is devoted to
sex, compared to the American's 78 per cent. 45 per cent of
the Post's subject matter space is devoted to emulation. Still
more extreme is the situation in respect to Photoplay and Arts
& Decoration, where sex rates five and zero per cent respec-
tively, and emulation rates 20 and 43 per cent.

The magazine spectrum breaks down into three major
categories; the five magazines in which the acquisitive cul-
ture is dominant, the four magazines in which the two cul-
tures co-exist; and the four remaining magazines in which the
older culture is dominant. It is significant that the first group
of magazines caters exclusively to women; the second and
third groups to both men and women.

There are two other women's magazines in which the ac-
quisitive culture is dominant. The Woman's Home Compan-
ion is edited for the urban woman, and Household Magazine,
the largest and most popular of the rural women's magazines,
caters to the small town and farm woman. Woman's Home
Companion may be said to be typical of the six urban
women's magazines with over 1,000,000 circulation Ladies'
Home Journal, McCalls, Woman's Home Companion, Good
Housekeeping, Pictorial Review, and Delineator; while
Household is typical of the five rural women's magazines

no

with over 1,000,000 circulation Household, Woman's
World, Needlecraft, Mother's Home Life and Household
Guest, and Gentlewoman. These nine magazines alone dis-
tribute 239,000,000 copies of their product every year.

There is a distinct difference between the rural and the
urban women's magazines; the rural magazines being much
closer to the older traditional American culture. Household
Magazine is one of the few magazines on our list that men-
tions God; the poetry is nai've and sincere, and the editor is
human, honest, and even imaginative about his readers. The
difficulty with Household would seem to be that there is a
conflict between the editorial office and the business office;
the business office being intent on apeing the formula and
commercialism of the urban women's magazine group. In
the urban women's magazines, the older American culture has
become so thin as to be hardly visible. Even the interest in
sex withers away in the Companion. While Household de-
votes 58 per cent of its fiction to sex, the Companion gauges
its readers' interest in sex at 22 per cent. The sophistication
element in Household is 16 per cent; in the Companion it is
1.5 per cent.

The group of four magazines in which neither culture
is dominant, but in which both cultures exist side by side, in-
cludes the Cosmopolitan, Liberty, True Story and the Satur-
day Evening Post. The following table will show what ele-
ments of the two cultures are present:

Magazine Older Culture Acquisitive Culture

Saturday Evening Post Sophistication Emulation

Cosmopolitan Sex Emulation

Liberty Sex Emulation

True Story Sex Emulation

In the magazines in which emulation is dominant, less than
three-fifths of the fiction is concerned with sex. But in Cos-

iii

mopolitan, Liberty and True Story over three-fifths of the
fiction is concerned with sex. The acquisitive culture is repre-
sented by a considerable dash of emulation: Cosmopolitan 13
per cent; Liberty 17 per cent; and True Story 30 per cent.
In connection with True Story it should be pointed out that
the emulative escape for the poor is crime and that this fact
is quite definitely recognized in the fiction content of this
magazine.

The Saturday Evening Post is in a class by itself. Its sophis-
tication content of 88 per cent is the highest of any of the
magazines examined, and its emulative content of 45 per
cent is second only to Harper's Bazaar, which is 68 per cent.
A third of the Post's readers have incomes of over $5,000 a
year. They can afford to play this emulative game and the
Post as a commercial enterprise duly exploits this fact in its
fictional content.

There are four magazines in which the older culture is
dominant: the American Magazine, Harper's Magazine, Na-
tion's Business and the American Weekly. In Harper's Maga-
zine we find perhaps the most typical expression of the "cul-
tured" upper-middle-class tradition, as it carries over from the
nineteenth century. The readers of Harpers are given no
emulative stimulus whatever, except in the ads. The sophisti-
cation rating is 37 per cent. Harpers ranks fourth in this
respect. In the American Magazine, the prewar, precrash cul-
ture persists. In particular, this magazine continues to exploit
the fictional formula of the prewar culture. Its preoccupa-
tion with the pretty romantic aspects of courtship reveals
how strong is the cultural lag against which the hard, gal-
vanic, emulative culture battles. In its articles and editorials,
the American appeals to the small city and small town Ameri-
can man, who admires business success, bristles alertly about
politics, and believes that the world is inhabited by villains
and kind people, with the kind people in a position of
dominance.

112

In the American Weekly we encounter another emulation
zero. Its readers are urban proletarians, too poor to play the
emulative game. The Hearst formula realizes that they are
strongly interested in sex: 65 per cent, but that they are even
more interested in science. Three times as much space is de-
voted to science as to sex. True, the science is of a primitive
sort, like Paul Bunyan's "Tales of the Blue Ox." Typical
American Weekly titles are: "The Sleeping Habits of the
Chimpanzee," "The Growth of the Iron Horse Since the Six-
Wheeled Locomotive," "Chicago Observatory Telegraphs to
the Dead," "Why Our Climate Is Slowly Becoming Tropical,"
"What the Tower of Babel Really Looked Like." The Ameri-
can Weekly is quite simply concerned with serving a satis-
fying dish of weekly thrills. The technique is robust since
the modern world is full of wonders and the appetites of the
readers are not complicated.

The Nation's Business is another very special case. This
magazine is the official organ of the United States Chamber
of Commerce, while the Saturday Evening Post might be
thought of as its unofficial organ. The Nation's Business ranks
with the Saturday Evening Post in point of sophistication. Its
editorial content is devoid of emulative appeal and even the
advertisements rate remarkably low in these respects; only 9.6
per cent of the ads appeal to emulation.

It would be a commonplace to remark that most of the
editorial content of these magazines is quite ephemeral. Fifty
years hence the literary historian will probably have little
difficulty in condensing the creative contribution of our total
commercial magazine-press during the postwar period into a
brief dismissive paragraph to the effect that the fugitive litera-
ture of this period was ugly, faked and frail. After one has
diligently read this curious stuff over a period of weeks, one
begins to see our contemporary magazine pseudoculture as
an almost human creature. It is a robot contraption, strung
together with the tinsel of material emulation, galvanized

"3

with fear, and perfumed with fake sex. It exhibits a definite
glandular imbalance, being hyperthyroid as to snobbism, but
with a deficiency of sex, economics, politics, religion, science,
art and sentiment. It is ugly, nobody loves it, and nobody
really wants it except the business men who make money
out of it. It has a low brow, a long emulative nose, thin,
bloodless, asexual lips, and the receding chin of the will-less,
day-dreaming fantast. The stomach is distended either by the
abnormal things-obsessed appetite of the middle-class and the
rich, or by the starved flatulence of the poor. Finally it is
visibly dying for lack of blood and brains.

THE ROLE OF EMULATION

In anatomizing this pseudoculture we must refer again to
our definition of culture as the sum-total of the human en-
vironment to which any individual is exposed, and point out
again that the test of a culture is what kind of a life it
affords not for a few but for all of its citizens. One grants
immediately that emulation has a place in any genuine cul-
ture. It is a question of balance, and the point here made is
that the quantity and kind of emulation exhibited by the
magazine pseudoculture is such as to affect adversely and
probably disastrously the viability of this synthetic creature
that the magazines offer us. Specifically, snobbism appears to
be the antithesis of sex. Where the first is dominant, the other
tends to be recessive.

An analysis of the entire contents of the thirteen maga-
zines shows that sex and emulation are the principal appeals
in the subject matter. Sentiment occupies on the average only
1.8 per cent of the total space in the magazines, humor only
.9 per cent. In the advertisements there is more emulation
than sex. The average appeal to sex in the ads in the thirteen
magazines is 9.6 per cent, the average appeal to emulation is
14.7 per cent. In the subject matter sex continues to domi-

114

nate emulation. This is particularly true in the fiction where
5 5 per cent of the stories have sex as the main appeal. Emula-
tion, however, occupies no inconsiderable place in the maga-
zines. Twenty-two per cent or one-fifth of the subject matter
is concerned with emulation.

There is one generalization about emulation as it appears
in these magazines that can safely be made, emulation is not
a commodity that can be offered to the poor. Not even the
lower middle-class can afford it. It is distinctly for the well-
to-do and for the rich. While fear is the dominant appeal in
the advertising sections of seven magazines which are read by
the lower income class, emulation is the dominant appeal in
the advertisements of six magazines which go to the upper
income-levels. For example: in True Story, 42 per cent of
the ads are fear ads. In contrast, Harper's Bazaar has no fear
ads, and 3 5 per cent of the ads are devoted to emulation.

Emulation is, of course, most apparent in magazines in
which the acquisitive, emulative culture is undiluted, like
Harper's Bazaar, Arts & Decoration and Photoplay. In the
previous chapter, "Chromium Is More Expensive," we have
already quoted emulative editorial advertising taken from
the first two of these magazines. A few brief examples of
snobbism, chosen not only from these magazines but from
the general list of magazines, will perhaps illustrate the preva-
lence of snobbism and its character.

(1) "It was a subtle satisfaction that no big social affair was
considered complete without us. 'Were the Roger Browns there?'
was the regular question in the aftermath of gossip." (True Story)

(2) " 'She's one of the Mount-Dyce-Mounts.' 'One of the Mount-
Dyce-Mounts,' echoed John unbelievingly, and forgetting all about
Jean, he hurried down the steps . . . and went up to where the
old lady had settled herself in a chair. John introduced himself with
a charming air." (Liberty)

( 3 ) " 'I keep only one groom so I help to look after my ponies
myself in the morning. I did not stop to take off my coat, because

"5

I was afraid I might miss you. Excuse.' He removed his duster
solemnly. In his tweed coat and well-worn riding breeches, his cos-
tume conformed to type." (Woman's Home Companion)

(4) "He's a hotel aristocrat. You're a country gentlewoman.
I'm so glad it's all over. How wise Dr. Fancher was not to announce
the engagement." (Saturday Evening Post)

(5) "Now for the problem of the Christmas gift, for, despite
the pleasure we all must surely feel in giving gifts to our friends,
the choosing of gifts is indeed a problem, and the problem lies
mainly in avoiding the banal." (Harper's Bazaar)

(6) "Those who are demanding 'contempora' are in a sense the
patrons of modern design. Just as the Church was at one time, and
the King at another." (Arts & Decoration)

THE ROLE OF SEX

Before plunging into the jungle of our magazine sex fic-
tion it will be necessary to establish certain points of refer-
ence.

1. The biological norm of the sex relation tends to assert
and re-assert itself against the religious and other taboos of
the social environment, and against the limitations and frus-
trations of the economic environment. In other words, the
readers of the magazines are both biological and social animals
who would doubtless like to be human, to live balanced,
vigorous and creative sexual and social lives.

2. Theoretically, the magazines, in so far as they deal
with sex at all, are trying to instruct and aid their readers
in solving their problems of sexual adjustment within the
existing framework of the economy and of the mores. Since
the writer of fiction or verse exhibits directly or indirectly
a set of values, the verse and fiction writers are inevitably
affecting, for good or ill, the values and attitudes of their
readers in regard to sex. There are also the articles which deal
with sex directly.

Against this background, let us now attempt to describe

116

what actually goes on in these magazines. The exploitation of
the sexual dilemmas of the population by advertisers will
be given consideration in the chapter on "Sacred and
Profane Love." In the fictional and verse content of the
popular magazines we have another, less direct form of ex-
ploitation. We know who writes the advertisements and why.
It is necessary now to ask: who writes the sex fiction and
why?

The first point to note is that very little of it is written
by literary artists. There is a categorical difference between
the equipment, attitude and purpose of the literary artist who
deals with sex relations, and the equipment, attitude and
purpose of the sex fictioneer.

The work of the artist is a work of discovery, including
self-discovery, and of statement. In the field of sex the mature
artist exhibits neither timidity nor shame. True, the artist is
often, like other human beings, the victim of biological or
socially acquired defects, inhibitions and distortions, both
physiological and psychological. Hence much genuine litera-
ture in the field of sex must be characterized as in a sense
compensatory writing. It would seem probable, for example,
that practically all the work of D. H. Lawrence is of this
nature, as well as some, at least, of the work of Walt Whit-
man. But both these writers, being genuinely gifted artists,
are concerned only with the presentation of the observed or
intuitively perceived truth; they are concerned with dis-
covery. They are serving no ulterior purposes, and are in one
sense writing primarily for themselves. And being strong na-
tures, they assert their own values, attitudes, judgments, for
value judgments are implicit in the most "objective" writing.

In contrast, the commercial sex fictioneer is primarily con-
cerned, not with the discovery and statement of truth, but
with the making of money. If, as ordinarily, his is a tenth
rate talent, his maximum service lies in the telling of a tale;
but in the telling he illuminates little or nothing. At his

worst the sex fictioneer is merely commercializing an accepta-
ble formula; he is "selling" the pseudoculture to itself; he does
nothing creative with the current sexual fact or with the
current sexual make-believe; he does not even achieve clear
statement.

In this commercial sex fiction, the pattern is cut to the
requirements of the editor, who specializes in calculating
what can and cannot be said within the limits of a com-
mercial enterprise designed to acquire or hold a certain class
or mass circulation. It is a fairly complex calculation, and
much study and experiment are required before the appren-
tice sex fictioneer gets the editorial "slant" of a particular
magazine.

Of the thirteen magazines examined, True Story is the
only one which definitely claims to offer sex instruction to
its readers.

"Until five years ago," said a full-page advertisement, . . .
"there was nowhere men and women, boys and girls, could turn to
to get a knowledge of the rules of life. . . . Then came True Story,
a magazine that is different from any ever published. Its foundation
is the solid rock of truth. ... It will help you, too. In five years
it has reached the unheard-of circulation of two million copies
monthly, and is read by five million or more appreciative men and
women."

While True Story is certainly a commercial enterprise, and
while an unsympathetic commentator might well allege that
it was specifically designed to exploit the postwar relaxation
of the sexual mores, it is nevertheless true that True Story is
immeasurably closer to reality than any of the other twelve
magazines examined. This, in spite of the fact that most of
its "true stories" give internal evidence of being fake stories,
nine-tenths of which are written by formula and perhaps one-
tenth by high school graduates eager to become writers.

The distinction of True Story rests on the fact that it

118

admits that sexual temptations sometimes occur and are some-
times yielded to; also that it deals with matrimony rather than
courtship. Its limitation is its virtuous surrender to the Puri-
tan conviction that an extra-marital slip is a sin, inevitably
followed by remorse and retribution.

Of eleven stories and articles in the issue examined, six
have sex for a major theme and five of these stories deal with
matrimonial difficulties, i. e., sexual temptations not evaded.
One must, of course, point out that no true description of the
sexual behavior of the poor is to be derived from True Story,
although there are scenes in which a married woman prepares
the room for the reception of her lover and receives him.
What true descriptions we have must be looked for in the
work of such novelists as Edward Dahlberg, James T. Farrell,
Erskine Caldwell and Morley Callaghan. The True Story
formula, in its negative and positive aspects, runs somewhat
as follows: sinner redeemed, sinner pays, sinner repents, saint
sacrifices all; the beauty of duty, of security after a narrow
escape from losing one's reputation and job; the beauty of
being a true wife, the beauty of resignation, of truthfulness,
and of character.

After a particularly lurid escapade the True Story heroine
is obliged to say something like this: "If every silly, senti-
mental fool in this sad old world could have witnessed that
scene, it would have done an enormous amount of good.
Many a home would have been saved from ruin. They would
have known the tempting Dead Sea fruit of illicit love for
what it was, giving a bitter flavor to life for all who taste
it."

Obviously, the success of Mr. Macfadden's enterprise is
based on the profitableness of bearing witness.

An analysis of 45 sex stories from ten magazines, includ-
ing True Story, yields much interesting material for specula-
tion. But as regards the technique of sexual behavior the
harvest is meagre indeed. We were able to discover only four

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items of premarital and two items of postmarital technique.

Premarital technique: How a mother can recognize the
first sign of love in her adolescent son (Woman's Home
Companion). How to approach a virgin (Data in a number
of stories, but all very meagre and questionable). How, if a
girl is careful and smart she can take everything and give
nothing (American Weekly) . Why an unmarried woman who
wishes to seduce a youth should avoid tragic diversions such
as those incident to the mistake of taking along her pet goat
(Harper's Bazaar).

Postmarital technique: How to commit bigamy. How to
kill a drunken husband and thereby improve one's social
status.

In addition to the information about technique, the 45 sex
stories present the following conclusions about sex, sex and
economics, and morals:

Men: "All men are pretty dumb and clumsy. There might
be men somewhere who lived up to the things the poets,
novelists and musicians said of men. If so, she had never
met them."

One man may be able to arouse a frigid woman, while
another may not.

A man will bet on his ability to pluck the bloom from a
virgin, and then not want it.

A genius is not bound by the moral code of Puritanism.

Marriage: The sex revolution of the postwar era led to un-
happiness.

After "sleeping around," actually or mentally, a married
couple's chance of happiness is with each other.

Through reading light, trashy stuff a woman may lose her
husband.

Sex and Economics: Millions cannot buy love. A mercenary
woman cares more for her car than for her husband. A rich

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girl is smart if she marries a poor boy who has brains. Since
a poor girl is often no good, it is safer to marry a rich girl.
Morals: Virtue is more attractive than vice. An "indiscre-
tion" can strip a woman of her good name, rob her of her
freedom, and cost her every penny she has in the world. A
common-law marriage may ruin a man's social position years
later. A married couple should be an example to other mar-
ried couples and to unmarried persons.

These conclusions and the six technical points represent all
that is to be gained from this magazine sex fiction.

Of the 45 sex stories examined, only 13 were straight sex
stories. The complications introduced in the remaining 32 are
as follows:

Thirteen: economics plus sex; eleven: romance plus sex;
five: the American scene plus sex; two: the sex revolution;
one: religion plus sex.

It is worth noting that although complications due to inter-
marriage of races and nationalities might be expected, prac-
tically nothing of this sort was encountered.

It should be emphasized that this magazine sex literature
centers around women rather than around men. The problems
of men are considered in only three of the 45 sex fiction
stories. It is also significant that men outnumber women in
the cast of characters; a surplusage of men is necessary prop-
erly to dramatize the feminine dilemma. This surplusage of
men is more pronounced as we ascend the class ladder. The
woman of True Story hopes for no more than a single lover.
The middle-class heroine must have at least the choice of two.
The grande dame of Harper's Bazaar requires a circle of
adoring youths with beautiful bodies, including at least one
millionaire.

So frequently does the theme repeat itself in this magazine
sex fiction that we feel warranted in saying that the dominant
desire of the woman is to be freed from some situation in
which she is bound or caught. But in only two instances out

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of the 45 (the sex revolution stories) does the heroine her-
self initiate positive action toward such liberation. The most
that the average heroine permits herself is to give some clue
to her prospective liberator. Out of a wealth of data we sub-
mit the following quotations which serve best to reveal the
typical heroine's attitude:

"Restlessness, dissatisfaction possessed her. She wanted more
more, somehow, than life was giving her. Other women were
happy sometimes such stupid, plain, elderly women were happy,
but she was continually fretted and harassed by this sense of miss-
ing something of being cheated." (Kathleen Norris. "Three Men
and Diana." The American)

"I had Wanted Out. Always I had Wanted Out. Yet whenever I
had tried to find a door when I had taken some great risk, like
marriage, in order to find the door I had failed. There had been
no door. Then, suddenly, in some unexpected place the door would
open!" (Elsie Robinson. "I Wanted Out." Cosmopolitan, April,
1934)

All these fiction heroines want happiness, of course, but it
is notable that they get happiness only in the romantic mo-
ment which precedes marriage. Stories of happy married life
are entirely lacking in the samples examined. Significant class
differences characterize the behavior of these heroines. The
extravagance of the rich woman in the matter of lovers has
already been indicated. The shifting milieu of these stories
would also seem to show a class difference.

In Class "A" magazines the scene is always Europe, the
Swiss Alps, Scotland, England, the Riviera. America is ignored
geographically. In the Class "B" magazines the geography is
mixed; Africa, London, the Oregon of the gold rush, a fresh
water college town, New England, Chicago, New York and
Hollywood. In the Class "C" magazines with only a few ex-
ceptions the locale is America the poor don't travel. The
typical scene is the country or small town, New England,

122

Chicago, New York and Hollywood. It would appear that
Hollywood is the Riviera of the proletarian as well as to a
considerable extent the focus for the dreams of the middle-
class woman.

The following table indicates the range of fiction heroines
encountered by class categories. Note that the typical rich
heroine is mercenary, the typical middle-class heroine is an
unawakened or unresponsive woman, and the typical poor
heroine is sexually responsive as well as biologically more
prolific. In magazine fiction as well as in life the poor woman
has the largest number of babies. While the 41 fiction hero-
ines of the middle-class produce only three children, the
eleven fiction heroines of the poor produce nine children.

SEX FICTION HEROINES

MERCENARY WOMEN:

Class "A" Magazines 51 per cent

Class "B" Magazines 10 per cent

Class "C" Magazines 10 per cent

UNRESPONSIVE WOMEN:

Class "B" Magazines 56 per cent

Class "C" Magazines 45 per cent

Class "A" Magazines 17 per cent

RESPONSIVE WOMEN:

Class "C** Magazines 45 per cent

Class "B" Magazines 34 per cent

Class "A" Magazines 17 per cent

As to inter-class relationships the typical fictional device
is the Cinderella theme, either straight, Poor Girl Marries
Rich Man, or in reverse, Poor Boy Marries Rich Girl, the latter
being apparently more popular. Proletarian characters are fre-
quently encountered in Class "A" sex fiction. It would

appear that the readers of the Class "A" magazines like to
parasite emotionally upon the richer sexual life of the poor.
The bulk of American magazines are read by the middle
class, the $2,000 to $5,000 income group. In the case of ten
magazines which we have selected as representative types, 5 1
per cent of the circulation goes to the middle class. Twenty
women's magazines, studied by Daniel Starch, show about the
same percentage; 57 per cent of them have middle-class read-
ers. The fact that the middle-class woman is the principal
reader of mass and class circulation magazines is important to
keep in mind in considering what we feel to be one of the
significant findings of the study. The editor of the typical
mass circulation magazine, usually a man, addresses himself
primarily to the restless unhappy middle-class woman. The
fiction exploits rather than resolves this unhappiness, just as
the advertising exploits the emulative things-obsessed psy-
chology of this woman, which it would seem arises chiefly
from her sexual frustration. Here are two quotations which
exhibit the condition of this middle-class woman.

(1) "Quite suddenly, without warning, Diana realized that her
marriage had been a losing fight. A mistake as far as her own
interior happiness was concerned. . . . She could still go on gal-
lantly picking strawberries, heating rolls, brewing coffee. But
somehow the glamour, the excitement was gone. Neal seemed to be
just a man, she just a woman, there seemed no particular reason for
their being together." (Kathleen Norris. "Three Men and Diana/'
American Magazine)

(2) "The second period in a woman's life is when, after many
strenuous years of adjustment toward husband and family, she
feels entitled to let her own personality have full scope. She wants
to forget as much as possible those difficult years, she wants to live
her own life, to entertain her own friends in her own background.
By this time plain Romeo has turned into Mr. Romeo Babbitt, but
there is no Mrs. Babbitt. There is instead a gracious woman in the
prime of life who has matured in excellence like old wine and the

124

cask must be adequate." (Daisy Fellowes. "Home, Sweet Home."
Harper's Bazaar)

We have already noted the inverse ratio of sex deficiency
and emulation. Material emulation and snobbism are appar-
ently substitutes for sexual satisfaction. From the point of
view of a commercial publisher interested in achieving a
maximum "reader interest" for his advertisers the ideal sub-
scriber to a middle-class woman's magazine is the woman
who has never experienced the full physical and emotional
satisfactions of sex; who is more or less secure in her eco-
nomic position and who determinedly compensates her sexual
frustration by becoming an ardent and responsive buyer.

One of the most frequent charges leveled against Ameri-
can culture is that it is woman-dominated. Women, it is said,
read the books, attend the concerts and exhibitions, run the
charities, figure increasingly in politics, etc. The inference is
that our cultural deficiencies are caused by this domination of
the woman, for which various explanations have been of-
fered.

Our examination of the magazine literature leads us to
question the accuracy of this picture. Is it women who have
created this ad-man's pseudoculture? Is it women who own
and direct these commercial enterprises of mass publications?
No, it is predominantly men. It may also be alleged that it is
the stupidity of men which is largely responsible for the
sexual and emotional frustration of the typical middle -class
woman. The result of the middle-class woman's physical or
emotional frustration is not that she compensates by achieving
a culture superior to that of the man. A much truer state-
ment would be that the exploitation of the dilemma of these
women by men has helped to bring about the collapse of
culture in the United States. It is significant to note in this
connection that it is precisely in the women's magazines that
sophistication tends to disappear. Of the five women's maga-

zines examined, four devoted less than three per cent of their
article and editorial space to sophistication.

In summarizing the sex content of the magazines it is
sufficient merely to note that it is almost incredibly thin and
vapid, useless as instruction, and deficient in thrills.

RELIGION, ART, SCIENCE

In the thirteen magazines examined, we find God men-
tioned once in a fiction story and twice in poems. Art is men-
tioned only by Arts & Decoration. Science, which gets full
if crude treatment in Hearst's American Weekly, is en-
countered in only one other magazine, Liberty, which con-
tains a story by Edgar Rice Burroughs, "Tarzan and the
Lion Man," in which the author has a paragraph or two
about the imaginary genesis of his hybrid.

THE ROLE OF SOPHISTICATION

Of the four criteria for sophistication referred to in earlier
chapters only one, the treatment of the depression, proved to
be important in quantity or revealing in content. Photo-
play, Arts & Decoration and Harper's Bazaar do not mention
the depression at all. The negative response to the depression
takes the form of a repudiation of the acquisitive culture and
a turning back in time to the older American virtues and
the older American pattern of life.

(i) "Looking back [to the days when her husband, now a
farm-hand, had an $8,000 a year salary] it seems as if we never
found anything very very real to quarrel about. And the queer
thing is I know we were both rather clever then. We weren't
stupefied with work, the way we are now. I suppose that must be
the answer. If I weren't too tired to think clearly, I'd be able to
see some sense to it. It actually seems as if there were more dullness
and stupidity in those smart squabbles about books and plays and

126

clothes and places to eat than there is in sitting here like dumb
animals, too tired to talk, contented because we're warm, and fed,
and alive."

(Hugh McNair Kahler, "Winter Harvest." Saturday Evening
Post}

(2) "Jonathan could not understand his sister's passionate loyalty
to the old house. He worshipped the modern, the technical, the
efficient. It was this that had made him persuade his brother to
abandon the leather factory, with its century-old reputation for
honesty and fair dealing and follow the will-o'-the-wisp of fortune
with the vacuum cleaners. Their story was the story of dozens of
small industries.

" 'Listen to me, Jonathan/ said Charlotte coldly, 'I want to
read you a few lines from this book.' She read, her voice trembling
with the intensity of her feeling:

!t 'Never the running stag, the gull at wing,
The pure elixir, the American Thing. . . .'

" 'It's that "The American Thing" we've got away from it,
from everything we stood for. And now we're going back to it.
. . . Look at the farmers. They've got food they can't sell but
no money. We'll take their leather goods in exchange for food and
hides.' . . .

" 'But that's barter,' Jonathan gasped.

" 'Savagery.'

"Bartlett looked at her steadily. . . . 'Barter,' he said, at length
'Ancient as the hills and modern as tomorrow'." (Francis Sill Wick-
ware. "The American Thing." Woman's Home Companion.)

In considering the positive response to the depression a
brief summary of the essential characteristics of these class
cultures will be useful. In magazines read by the poor, fear
and sex are dominant and emulation is negligible. The middle-
class are immunized against fear, exhibit a definite sex de-
ficiency and are strong in emulation: they are the climbers.
In magazines going to the rich, fear reappears, and sex is
exploited chiefly for its mercenary or amusement value. Since
these magazines primarily exploit the climbing nouveau riche,

127

emulation is very strong and is reinforced by a tremendous
preoccupation with "things." An example of the mercenary
characteristic of the rich as exhibited in the high income maga-
zines is the following:

" 'My dear Mr. Sherrard,' he said, 'as a man of the world, you
will at once comprehend the situation. My wife and I are devoted
to each other; unfortunately, we have no money. Not-a-single-sou.'
He paused to let this sink in, then continued blandly as before. 'Our
tastes are what might be described as traditionally extravagant. We
can't help it, we inherit them from our ancestors. Together, our life,
save for a few moments of bliss, is impossible. Apart, we simply
cannot prevent I repeat, cannot prevent money coming to us ir
large quantities. It is odd.'

* 'Very,' agreed Sherrard.

" 'I know what you are thinking: that it would be more nc
starve than acquire such money. But then we are not noble-
that way'." (Margery Sharp. "Immoral Story." Harper's

Where, in a transitional period, do the readers Ox
magazines think they are going? Before attempting to answc
this question, it is worth noting that the letters from readers
warrant the belief that the readers are going somewhere much
faster than the editors would like.

The American Magazine represents the lower middle-class
male; the Saturday Evening Post, the upper middle-class male;
Nation's Business, the rich. How do the men of these different
classes regard the future of business and of government? The
American Magazine is behind the New Deal sturdily and
optimistically. None the less, in a pinch it is clear that the
typical American Magazine reader would go fascist. This is
revealed by the general direction of the articles and by readers'
letters. The Saturday Evening Post is belligerent and not
frightened. The creed of the Post is to repel every invasion
of business by the government. It professes to believe that

128

business is capable of running the country without govern-
ment aid. Whenever this illusion breaks down the magazine
alertly serves its readers by offering optimistic adaptations to
the necessities of the moment. The Post's high point of sophis-
tication is registered in the following quotation which is the
concluding paragraph of an article by Caret Garrett entitled
"Washington Miscellany."

"The law of necessity hitherto acting [before the Roosevelt
Administration] was a law of nightmare. For that it is proposed
to substitute a law of the disciplined event. To say this has never
happened is not to say it cannot happen. But certainly it was by
the other way that the world grew as rich as it is, which is richer
than it ever was before."

The Nation's Business is too near, perhaps, to the seats of
power not to have looked over the edge of the precipice and
to have become doubtful. "Capital is Scared," it headlines,
and in recording the timidity of investors remarks: "In other
words they wonder whether or not the days of private capi-
talism are numbered." Curiously the editor of Nation's Busi-
ness seems to be less confident that Fascism is our next phase
than are the editors of the Communist Daily Worker. In
reading the articles and editorials of Nation's Business one gets
the impression that these frightened business men of Wall
Street, and of the provincial chambers of commerce, would
not be surprised if they awoke tomorrow morning to find the
revolution on their doorsteps.

With regard to the poor, our magazine indices are True
Story and the famous Vox Pop of Liberty. It seems clear that
Liberty readers comprise a high percentage of war generation
males, especially Legionnaires. Their notion of a revolution
would appear to be a miraculous change of political adminis-
tration whereby suddenly everybody would get $5,000 a year.
In the lack of such miracles they advocate homespun nostrums

129

like the scrapping of machines, going back to the land, etc.
While it is clear that the readers of Liberty are not sophisti-
cated radicals, labor legislation, technological unemployment,
and the revolution get mentioned in the Vox Pop pages.
Whether the Liberty readers go fascist or communist would
appear to depend upon the energy and astuteness which one or
the other party manifests in proselytizing and mobilizing
them.

True Story is a mine of sophistication data regarding the
poor. The editors write about the family problems created
by the depression and invite contributions on the subject
from their readers, but the absorption with these problems
is clearly evident in the fiction as well. To the poor, poverty
is a perpetual problem, in good as well as in bad times. It is
the unique distinction of True Story among the magazines
examined that it is the only one which contains stories about
the poor. Despite the fakery which is apparent in much of
this fiction, there is also much genuinely revealing stuff. In
the issue examined, four of the nine fiction stories deal with
the working class and two deal with the very poor.

As already noted, the fiction writers for True Story recog-
nize that the way out for the poor is crime. In the following
quotation there is presented a typical white-collar depression
dilemma. The story concerns a burdened father who, unwill-
ing to seek the way out through crime, kills himself in such
a way that his family may collect the insurance and pay their
debts.

" 'You know, Lois, the rottenest part of it all is Dad,' he said
slowly. . . . "Dad hasn't had much out of life. Mother's a swell
person in her way, but she's certainly made his life miserable. He's
crazy about us about all his kids but we've cost him an awful lot
and I don't think we've given him much in return. When I look at
Dad and think of all the years he's striven beyond his strength, of
all the things he's gone without to give us things of how little he's

130

had out of life, I get sick inside. He's a man made for cheerfulness,
and freedom and happy-go-lucky ways. And he's been harnessed to
routine and duties and schedules all his life. And for what? He's
ended in disgrace and failure. No matter what we think and we
don't think he's a disgrace and a failure that's what it boils down
to in the eyes of the world.

" 'A letter from Papa a letter. . . . He's going to commit
suicide. . . . He's doing it for us. ... You can see for yourself.
He thinks he's no good, and that he'll never land another job at his
age. He wants to leave us his insurance. He knows that'll wipe out
every debt we have and start us fresh. It's all he has to give and
he's willing'."

("Desperate Days." True Story.)

The alternative to crime as a way out would appear to be
suicide. But what happens when the poor do essay crime as a
way out of their dilemmas? The following quotation is taken
from a story dealing with the very poor.

"It was the first motion picture I had ever seen, despite the fact
that our little hamlet had boasted two shows weekly for many years.
. . . We walked ten miles to the next town. . . . Jimmie's pockets
were bulging with the life savings of his aunt, while he let me
believe the money was rightfully his. ... In my talks with Jimmie,
I came to see a change in him. He laughed about the decencies of
life, about the people who worked hard for their bread, about the
poor people who stood for oppression from the rich. . . . The well
defined line between right and wrong seemed to grow fainter as
the days passed. Sometimes I thought Jimmie was right about the
unfairness of things and our privilege to make up for it outside
the law. . . .

"Jimmie was sentenced first, and taken to prison several days be-
fore my sentence was fixed. As he passed the women's cells, I could
hear him singing 'Let the Rest of the World Go By.' He was trying
to be a good sport. . . . Club women called on me and tried in
their mechanical way to preach morals to me. Their visits served
only to antagonize me. All the time they were talking, my heart

131

cried out 'But you've had a chance in life. You had love and home
and friends. I didn't want to steal. Jimmie was sick, and I was scared
he'd die, if I didn't help him get the stuff.' My lips did not form the
words. In fact I hardly spoke to them at all. I scowled my hatred at
them, and saved my tears for my pillowless bunk."
("His Mother's Confession." True Story.)

The conclusion indicates that crime, that is theft, is no way
out after all since the wages of crime is jail. It is estimated
that the poor, that is to say, those having less than $2,000 a
year, constitute over 75 per cent of the total population.
Where are they going in this transitional period? It seems clear
that a considerable percentage of the readers of True Story
are desperate and cynical about the possibility of escape from
their dilemmas by any other route than the crime route.
Clearly that route is being increasingly followed as Abraham
Epstein notes in "Insecurity, A Challenge to America," when
he points out that since the depression the total value of
insurances policies lapsed for inability to pay amounts to
$3,000,000,000, and that the prisoners admitted to Sing Sing
for robbery have increased by 70 per cent. It would seem
apparent that here we have a nexus of potential revolutionary
material, inert at the moment, but capable of mobilization
by an able revolutionary leader who could show a practical
way out, other than the way of crime.

Recently in talking to a group of business men who were
re-focusing their advertising expenditures upon the narrowing
sector of the population which represents any exploitable buy-
ing power, I raised the question as to what business intended
doing with these extra-economic men. The answer was
"Nothing." The assumption so far as I could gather seemed
to be that the surplusage of the population would starve peace-
ably and eliminate itself. I recommended the reading of True
Story to these bemused plutocrats. It seems very clear that the
readers of True Story will not starve peaceably.

132

Here then we have the spectrum of the ad-man's pseudo-
culture as revealed by its mass and class magazine literature.

Is it desirable to rehabilitate this ad-man's pseudoculture?
The question is somewhat beside the point since history does
not evolve by a series of moral or esthetic choices. A culture
is rejected, not because it is ugly and unjust, but because it is
not viable. The more pertinent question, therefore, is: "Is it
possible to rehabilitate this pseudoculture?" The answer here
is the same answer which must be given to the question: "Is it
possible to rehabilitate the capitalist economy?" The capitalist
economy can survive as long as it can validate its rising mound
of paper titles to ownership and income by the enslavement
of labor and by progressive imperial conquests. The capitalist
culture the ad-man's pseudoculture can survive as long as
it can give some substance to the traditional concept of indi-
vidual opportunity; the ability of the able individual to rise
out of his class. The economy and the culture are Siamese
Twins; or rather, they are aspects of the same thing. Examina-
tion of this magazine literature reveals clearly that the demo-
cratic dogma is dying if not already dead; that the emulative
culture is not accessible to the poor and to the lower middle-
class; that the poor are oriented toward crime, and potentially
at least, toward revolution; that the middle classes are oriented
toward fascism. In short, the ad-man's pseudoculture is not
satisfying. To be effectively exploited it must be diluted with
elements derived from the older culture and with some meas-
ure of sophistication and service, particularly with respect to
the lower income groups. Its decadence parallels rather strictly
the decadence of the capitalist economy. Historically, the
ad-man's pseudoculture will probably be regarded as a very
frail and ephemeral thing.

We must therefore conclude that this culture, or pseudo-
culture, is not viable, hence cannot be rehabilitated. This
conclusion will be regarded as optimistic, or pessimistic, de-
pending upon the point of view of the reader.

133

CHAPTER

7

THE NATURAL HISTORY OF ADVERTISING

ASK a child who is just beginning to read: "What is a news-
paper? What is a magazine?" He will speak of news and
fiction and advertising as integral parts of the same thing.
Explain and argue as much as you like, you will not be able
to disturb his primitive conviction that the advertising is not
just as much a part of the paper as the news, and that, if the
thing is to make sense, it has to make sense as a unit. Tell him
that the news and editorials represent one thing, one respon-
sibility, one ethic, one function, one purpose; that the adver-
tising represents another thing, another responsibility, an-
other purpose. He nods vaguely and gives it up.

In other words, the child's instinct leads him to precisely
the same conclusion as that set forth and documented in the
preceding study of the magazines.

Advertising, in the broadest sense of the word, is as old as
trade. The definition offered by Frank Presbrey in his "His-
tory and Development of Advertising would seem to be
sufficiently broad and accurate. To quote it again: "Adver-
tising is printed, written, or graphic salesmanship deriving
from oral salesmanship." The modern spread and intensified
use of the instrument in America is made possible by our
almost universal literacy. But ancient graphic and written
advertising exhibits a functional relationship to the then
current nexus of economic and social fact which is strikingly
similar to the contemporary set-up.

The Babylonian temples were built of sun-baked bricks.
Each brick was stamped with the name of the temple and the
name of the king who built it. The temples were advertising,
just as the Woolworth and Chrysler Buildings are adver-
tising. There is even some justice in Presbrey's observation
that these temples represented "an institutional campaign con-
ducted by the kings in behalf of themselves and their dynas-
ties."

The Rosetta Stone is a eulogy of Ptolemy Epiphanes, dating
from 156 B.C., in three languages: Coptic, hieroglyphs and
Greek. It was erected by the local priests in gratitude for a
remission of taxes. The priests were, in effect, the local satraps
of Ptolemy and the Rosetta Stone was functional with respect
to the discharge of their responsibility. It was necessary to
"sell" Ptolemy to the people, and probably the priests acted
at the suggestion, certainly with the approval of their over-
lord.

When President Roosevelt was inaugurated he proceeded
more directly. Using the modern instrumentality of the radio,
he sold the American people on the closing of the banks and
the incidental wiping out of perhaps $6,000,000,000 of their
savings. The priests the radio broadcasters contributed
free time, and the other priests the newspapers contributed
enthusiastic approval and applause. With the evidence of this
and later triumphs of government-as-advertising before us,,
those primitive Babylonian practitioners seem hopelessly out-
classed.

Since literacy was the privilege of a minority, the Baby-
lonian tradesmen used barkers and symbols. Later, inscrip-
tions were employed. Lead sheets found in ancient Greek
temples affirmed the rights of property by cursing the
sacrilegious people who did not return lost articles to their
owners. In ancient Greece the arts of elocution and music
were functional with respect to trade; the Greek auctioneer

135

was an elocutionist and was usually accompanied by a mu-
sician.

The word "libel" is Latin. In ancient Rome a libel was a
public denouncement of an absconding debtor.

It seems probable that advertising was more or less profes-
sionalized in very ancient times. For example there is some
reason for believing that the walls of ancient Pompeii may
have been controlled by a commercial contractor. Early post-
ers were inscriptions announcing theatrical performances and
sports, and commending the facilities of commercial baths.
Presbrey renders one such advertisement as follows: "The
troop of gladiators of the sedil will fight on the 3ist of May.
There will be fights with wild animals, and an awning to
keep out the sun."

With the break-up of the Roman Empire, advertising shared
the general obscuration of the middle ages. Says Presbrey,
"For nearly a thousand years, following the decline of Rome,
advertising made no progress. Instead, it went backward,
following the retreating steps of civilization."

When the profession re-emerges, it is under the changed
conditions of the medieval church-state. A decree of Philip
Augustus in 1280 proclaims:

"Whosoever is a crier in Paris may go to any tavern he
likes and cry its wine, provided they sell wine from the wood
and there is no other crier provided for that tavern; and the
tavern keeper cannot prohibit him. If a crier finds people
drinking in a tavern he may ask what they pay for the wine
they drink; and he may go out and cry the wine at the prices
they pay, whether the tavern keeper wishes it or not, provided
always that there be no other crier employed for that tavern."

The "just price" for which the crier served was four
dinarii a day. It was further provided that if the tavern
keeper closed his door against the crier, the latter might cry
wine at the price of the king's wine, and claim his fee.

Perhaps the last proviso gives a clue to the motivation of

Philip Augustus' proclamation. The king was in the wine busi-
ness, too, and was accordingly interested in the education and
expansion of the market. The king's wine was to be sold at
a given price, which provided a measuring stick for competi-
tion and was doubtless a factor in price maintenance.

As one might expect, the re-birth of advertising coincides
with the expansion of trade in Western Europe made possible
by the suppression of piracy and banditry by the Hanseatic
League. In the sixteenth century the chief form of advertising
was the poster. It was called a si-quis (if anybody), the der-
ivation being from the Roman lost article posters. Most
si-quis were want advertisements. The chief billboard in Lon-
don was St. Paul's Cathedral, which was crowded with
lawyers, seamstresses, etc., seeking clients. Like the modern
office building or railroad terminal the sixteenth-century
church also contained tobacco shops and bookstalls. Tobacco,
coffee and books were among the first products advertised.
It is in connection with the exploitation of literature by ad-
vertising that one encounters, with a glow of pleasure, no
less a person than Ben Jonson, in his usual role of objector
and satirist.

In Every Man out of his Humor, one of the characters is
Shift, who haunts St. Paul's "for the advancement of a si-quis
or two, wherein he hath so varied himself that if any of them
take he may hull himself up and down in the humorous world
a little longer." By 1600 handbills and placards in behalf of
books became so common that Jonson enjoined his bookseller
to use his works for wrapping paper rather than promote
them by the sensational methods then in use.

The objection is particularly interesting as coming from
Jonson, who, although he had been successively a bricklayer,
a soldier and a playwright, was by nature a scholar-poet, and
an intellectual aristocrat. He probably felt, like the modern
historians Morrison and Commager, that advertising had al-
ready "elevated mendacity to the status of a profession." He

137

tolerated the noble patrons to whom he dedicated his works
because they helped to support him; but he clearly despised
the "new people," the middle-class business men, who, having
tasted the sweets of profit in the expanding market, were
marshaling their forces for the later conquests of manufac-
turing and commerce.

Art was conscripted into the service of trade when Hogarth
was employed at making inn signs and illustrating handbills
for tradesmen, including one advertising himself as an en-
graver and another for his sisters, who were designers of
frocks.

By the end of the seventeenth century the apparatus of
poster and handbill advertising was functioning at full blast
within the limits set by the still primitive facilities of trans-
port and communication. Practically all the stigmata of the
modern practice of advertising were present. The greed and
social irresponsibility of the advertiser expressed itself in
sweeping claims and cheerful misrepresentation; his tasteless-
ness in bad art and worse English. The seventeenth century
trader was a go-getting fellow a low fellow coming up, with
nothing to lose in the matter* of social status and a world of
profit to gain. The nobility and the princes of the church
denounced him; city ordinances were passed in London threat-
ening with severe penalties tradesmen who were so immodest
as to advertise the prices of their wares. But the advertiser
met scorn with scorn and drove the logic of his acquisitive
opportunity always harder and higher. A French visitor to
London in the middle of the eighteenth century comments on
the huge and ridiculous ornamentation of the shop signs, As
some of the early prints made us realize, the streets of seven-
teenth century London were scarcely less vulgar and com-
mercial than the Great White Way of modern New York.

Business, however, still lacked its major tool, the press. It
is upon the evolution of this instrument that we must now
concentrate our attention.

It cannot be too strongly emphasized that the press begins
and ends as an instrument of government, whether official
or unofficial, actual, or potential and aspiring. What it is today
it was in its earliest beginnings. The invention of printing
approximately coincided with the early struggles for power
of the rising middle class. In this long chess game, with its
shifting alliances, its victories, defeats and drawn battles and
its unstable truces, the press is the queen without whose sup-
port the king, the official ruler, is helpless: a most bawdy,
promiscuous and treacherous queen, whose power is today
threatened by a new backstairs mistress, the radio. The press
has played virtuous, even heroic roles in the past, and still
does. But on the whole, she is like Archibald MacLeish's poet
in his Invocation to the Social Muse: She sleeps in both camps
and is faithful to neither.

Although the press is and always was an instrument of
government, it is even more important to point out that the
press came to birth as an instrument of trade, which was
aspiring to be government. From her earliest memory the
infant Messalina was rocked in the cradle of business.

In 1594 the French philosopher Montaigne published an
essay entitled Of a Defect in our Policies in which he urged
the establishment of exchanges for tradesmen and buyers.
As a result a "Bureau D'Affiches" was established in Paris.
It functioned for only a brief period and was followed by a
quite obvious technical advance, the publication of a Journal
D'Affiches (Journal of Public Notices) which is said to be
the first periodical in the history of Western Europe. The
first issue appeared Oct. 14, 1612. It was a want-ad medium,
no more and no less newspaper of, by and for trade, and
this it has continued to be for more than 300 years. It is now
called Les Petites Affiches, and is still a periodical of want-ads
and public notices. An humble and virtuous creature, Les
Petites Affiches the Martha of newspaperdom. Let us keep
her in mind when we come to study the careers of her suc-

139

cessors and rivals, the Marys, Ninons, Carmens and Messalinas
who have relegated her to her present comfortable and re-
spectable bourgeois obscurity.

Trade, then, was news, and trade plus printer's ink became
advertising, but still news. Abortive public registers were
chartered by James I and Charles I in England. Henry Walker
published his Perfect Occurences in 1649 this being a house
organ for his Public Register or Enterance. But government
was jealous of the emergent fourth estate. Perfect Occurences
was suppressed in 1650 and Walker's Public Registry, being
deprived of advertising, soon died.

But the forces of the trading class, with God, as usual,
conscripted under their banner, were marching toward the
conquest of power. In 1657 Marchmont Needham, Crom-
well's official journalist, was publishing the bi-weekly Mer-
curius Politicus and Publick Intelligencer. He established
eight offices of "public advice" in London and in 1657 ob-
tained permission from Cromwell to issue, in addition to the
news letter, a weekly sheet called the Publick Adviser. All the
advertisements, then called "advices," were of the same size.
The fees were four shillings for a workman, five for a book-
seller and ten for a physician. Needham had a monopoly
advantage and used it ruthlessly. When, a little later, he raised
his prices, the indignant tradesmen denounced him as "The
Devil's Half -Crown Newsmonger."

Since the news letter was a medium for the literate ex-
clusively, it was natural that booksellers were among the
earliest advertisers. But the medicine man and the realtor
were also early on the scene. Since the mass market for food
and clothing was not yet literate, such advertisers do not ap-
pear until later. At this point it is merely important to note
that trade, for its full development, required universal lit-
eracy, and that the later use of public funds for school pur-
poses was conceivably motivated less by idealistic considera-
tions than by the needs of trade.

140

Cromwell's Ironsides were business men out for power and
marching under the banner of God. They needed spiritual
food, and when Cromwell marched into Scotland, a news-
book was published for distribution to his army of "Saints."
Here are some specimen titles of the books advertised in that
publication, all of them obviously good selling copy for the
Puritan conquest of power, just as, nearly three centuries
later, Bruce Barton's Man Nobody Knows became the bible
of our modern Rotarian saints, marching under the banner
of "Service":

Hooks and eyes for Believers Breeches

A Most Delectable Sweet Perfumed nosegay for God's

saints to smell at.

The spiritual Mustard pot to make the Soul Sneeze with

Devotion.

Upon the restoration in 1 660 Charles II quickly put a stop
to that. He recognized the growing power of the press by
suppressing it. Instead, a two-page publication was issued
called the London Gazette. It refused to carry advertising on
the ground that commercial announcement had no place in
a "paper of intelligence," that is to say, a newspaper which
presented non-commercial news. As a matter of fact the Lon-
don Gazette was an official government newspaper and is still
published as such. Later in the reign of Charles II it did pub-
lish advertisements, but in a separate sheet. The monarchy
continued to regard the press as a government function and
privilege. In 1665 Roger L 'Estrange was given a patent as
"Surveyor of the Press" which included the exclusive priv-
ilege of "writing, printing and publishing advertisements."

The amiable monarch was not averse to making a little
money out of trade, although he doubtless considered the up-
start tradesmen as permanently objectionable. The poet,
Fleetwood Sheppard, who was one of his favorites, doubtless

141

expressed the royal view when he wrote the following criticism
of current advertising practice:

They [the current newsbooks of the year 1657 when this was
written] have now found out another quaint device in their trading.
There is never a mountebank who either by professing of chemistry
of any other art drains money from the people of the nation but
these arch-cheats must have a share in the booty, and besides filling
up his paper, which he knew not how to do otherwise, he must
have a feeling to authorize the charlatan forsooth, by putting him
into the newsbook.

Yet Charles II himself, shortly after his accession, was
obliged to turn advertiser, as witness the following plaintive
appeal to his rascally subjects:

We must call on you again for a Black Dog between the grey-
hound and a spaniel, no white about him only a streak on his breast,
and tayl a little bobbed. It is His Majestie's own dog, and doubtless
was stolen. Whoever finds him may acquaint any at Whitehall, for
the dog was better known at Court than those who stole him. Will
they never leave robbing His Majesty? Must he not keep a dog?

By the middle of the eighteenth century a considerable
press, whose principal support derived from advertising, was
established in England and on the continent. The essence of
the modern phenomenon had been achieved and its essence
was clearly recognized by contemporary commentators. We
may therefore conclude this outline of the early history of
advertising with the following quotation from Dr. Samuel
Johnson, writing in the Idler in the year 1759:

Advertisements are now so numerous that they are very negli-
gently perused, and it is therefore become necessary to gain atten-
tion by magnificence of promises and by eloquence sometimes
sublime and sometimes pathetic. Promise, large promise, is the soul

142

of an advertisement [Promise them everything and blow hard, said
my early tutor, the sea lion]. The true pathos of advertisements
must have sunk deep into the heart of every man that remembers
the zeal shown by the seller of the anodyne necklace, for the ease
and safety of the poor toothing infants and the affection with which
he warned every mother that she would never forgive herself if her
infant should perish without a necklace. . . . The trade of adver-
tising is now so near to perfection that it is not easy to propose
any improvement. But as every art ought to be exercised in true
subordination to the public good, I cannot but propose it as a moral
question to these masters of the public ear, whether they do not
sometimes play too wantonly with our passions.

Dr. Johnson wrote as a good liberal of his period and his
phrases have a familiar ring. He might almost have been
reviewing a volume by Stuart Chase or applauding the de-
mand of Messrs. Schlink and Kallet for a new law to restrain
the iniquities and hypocrisies of advertising. In justice to
these writers one must acknowledge both the value of their
exposures and the even more significant fact that all three
have moved steadily leftward in their political orientation.

What the good doctor did not see and contemporary
liberals seem scarcely more acute was that, given a literate
population, the press becomes one of the instruments of gov-
ernment; that if the press is financed by the vested property
interests of business, then in the end business becomes govern-
ment. Finally, the good doctor should have realized the futility
of introducing moral and ethical values into a trade relation-
ship. The concepts of "good" and "bad" suffer a sea change
in this relationship; good advertising is advertising which
makes profits and bad advertising is advertising which does
not make profits. Neither the "regulative" attempts of gov-
ernment nor the idealistic campaigns of reformers in and out
of advertising will seriously affect the economic determinants
which operate in this relationship. At least they haven't for
over three hundred years.

143

Dr. Johnson felt that the art of advertising had reached
approximate perfection in the middle of the eighteenth cen-
tury. In a sense he was right. The archetypes of contemporary
technical practice are almost all to be found in the newspaper
and handbill advertising of that period. The later develop-
ments have been chiefly those of speed and spread, with,
however, this qualification: these developments have brought
into being a series of interlocking vested interests, which,
while entailed effects of the underlying economic process, have
also come to function as important causes, influencing and
even determining to a considerable extent the subsequent
evolution of our civilization.

The point of view adhered to in this book is that of regard-
ing the instruments of social communication as instruments
of rule, of government. In this view the people who control
and manage our daily and periodical press, radio, etc., become
a sort of administrative bureaucracy acting in behalf of the
vested interests of business. But every bureaucracy becomes
itself a vested interest; it develops its own will to expansion
and power. Bureaucracies are likely to be what governments
die of. In Russia a bureaucracy was set up, theoretically, to
solve the tasks of socialist construction, and gradually, with
the coming to birth of the classless society and the elimination
of the conflicts which the state power must adjust or sup-
press, to "wither away." The Russians are frank in confessing
that they are obliged to fight the tendency of their bureau-
cracy to propagate itself verdantly. This struggle in fact has
been and is one of the most difficult tasks of the socialist
construction.

In the following chapter we shall consider two other in-
struments of rule, namely education and propaganda, and
show how the use of these instruments is frequently combined
with the use of advertising.

144

CHAPTER

8

THE THREE GRACES:
Advertising, Propaganda, Education

MODERN advertising reaches its highest expression in the
United States and under the political and social forms of our
democratic institutions and concepts: a free press, popular
education, representative government. It is important to note
that the contemporary phenomenon is an aspect of our so-
called "surplus economy," as is revealed by the use of the
phrase "sales resistance" in current advertising parlance.
"Sales resistance" means an impedance of the distributive
function. It implies a lack of spontaneous demand for the
product or service which may be caused,

(1) By the inferiority of the product as to quality or
price with respect to competing products.

(2) By the inertia of established buying patterns in the
market at which the product is aimed.

(3) By the inter-industrial competition, as for example,
brick against lumber or meat against cheese.

(4) By the inadequacy of the class or mass buying power
with respect to the volume and price of commodities and
services offered on the market.

Although existing buying power is ultimately determina-
tive, it is possible to manipulate consumer preferences and
the division of the consumer's dollar within this iron limit.
In other words the market can be "educated" or propa-
gandized as you choose to put it, just as it can be partially
or wholly monopolized and the controls established with re-

145

spect to volume of production, distribution and price. These
are, perhaps, the two major factors in the obsolescence of the
"law" of supply and demand.

The education, or manipulation of the market may pro-
ceed directly through the advertising of the product by the
manufacturer or by a group of manufacturers organized as
a trade association; through unsigned publicity prepared and
issued by the manufacturer or his agent; through the more
or less influenced or coerced "co-operation" of the daily or
periodical press, radio and cinema; even through similar in-
fluences or coercions focused upon our institutions of formal
education. Sometimes all four methods are used. A few typical
examples will illustrate the nature of the process, its detailed
exposition being left for other chapters.

It happens that a single manufacturer dominates the mar-
ket for automobile tire valves, caps and gauges. He stands
to profit, therefore, by any expansion of this market. Hence
his advertising has tended to be primarily "educational";
that is to say, it tells motorists that proper inflation adds to
the durability of tires, that improper inflation is dangerous;
that the air pressure in tires should be frequently tested,
hence the motorist should own his own gauge; that the valves
require more or less frequent replacement.

Note that all this "education" is sound enough on the
whole and in the consumer's interest as well as that of the
manufacturer and distributor. Such education, or promotion,
can be achieved more economically, on the whole, by publicity
than by advertising, since the publicizing of the manufac-
turer's name and the brand name of his product, is, while
desirable in view of actual or latent competition, not essential.

Many newspapers and magazines carry columns of advice
to motorists; the editors of these automobile sections and
pages can readily be persuaded to publish small items urging
motorists to keep the tires of their cars properly inflated;
especially if the manufacturer or his agent does the whole

column in which the advice about tires is mixed with other
standard bits of information and warning. This relieves the
newspaper or magazine staff of labor and expenditure; some-
times a staff member, or a journalist having working rela-
tions with several publications, is induced to do the job for
a fee paid by the manufacturer, and then see that the "edu-
cation" or promotion is duly published. But such arrange-
ments are precarious unless the newspaper or magazine gets
some quid pro quo. Hence an educational publicity campaign
of this kind is usually correlated with a minimum expendi-
ture for paid advertising.

There is nothing unusual about such procedures, nor is any
violation of the current business code involved. True, the
technique requires the application of interested economic
pressures. But so does the technique of security promotion
represented by the Morgan preferred list. In so far as moral
or ethical judgments are applicable to such procedures it
would seem futile to apply them to the individuals involved;
rather, they should be directed, not merely against the exist-
ing business code, but against the system under which such
codes naturally develop.

Another example. General Motors sells automobiles and
advertises them in the Saturday Evening Post, which is one
of the reasons why the Post can pay high prices for articles
and fiction and yet sell for a nickel. But the fact that Gen-
eral Motors and other automobile manufacturers advertise
in the Saturday Evening Post also serves to explain certain
elements in the editorial content of the magazine. The Post
by reason of its advertising lineage becomes an important
and profitable business property, one of a group of business
properties. Hence the editorial policy of the Post is inevitably
conservative in its policies. With equal inevitability its edi-
torial management is favorably disposed toward the specific
interests of its advertisers. The Post may or may not consider
itself primarily an advertising medium; it is so regarded by

the advertiser and his agent. The advertising manager of the
Post must be prepared to show that the Post is a profitable
medium, a favorable medium; that the editorial content of
the magazine is favorable to, and supplements, the message
of the advertiser.

Saturday Evening Post readers will perhaps recall that
automobile fiction stories appear recurrently in that maga-
zine; that these and other stories are often illustrated with
happy and prosperous people in automobiles. Naturally the
artist is not permitted to make recognizable a particular
make of automobile.

The implication must, of course, be qualified before it can
stand. It would be expected in an automobile age that auto-
mobiles should figure in much contemporary fiction. It would
be impossible for the Post, which solicits and publishes ad-
vertising of all kinds of products, to emphasize unduly in its
editorial columns the use of any particular product.

But it would also be bad business not to utilize the editorial
content of the magazine to increase its value to advertisers,
and that is exactly what is done as a matter of course, not
merely by the Post, but by many other newspapers and mag-
azines of large circulation, such as Good Housekeeping,
House and Garden, Arts and Decoration. It is inevitable,
since the publication is a business enterprise, that the business
accounting should extend to the editorial as well as the ad-
vertising management; the deciding vote in any issue is nat-
urally that of the advertising management.

American children, even a heavy percentage of the chil-
dren of working class parents, brush their teeth. They have
been taught to do so. By whom?

By the manufacturers and advertisers of toothbrushes and
toothpastes, operating directly through signed advertise-
ments in newspapers and magazines, indirectly through the
co-operation of the dental profession, indirectly through the
more or less syndicated "health talks" published in news-

148

papers and magazines, indirectly through the teaching of
hygiene in the schools. The co-operation of the dental pro-
fession is secured by the distribution of free samples to den-
tists, the solicitation of salesmen, etc: but also and more
importantly it is sought by "constructive educational" adver-
tising in which the advertiser urges the reader to "visit your
dentist every six months": such campaigns that of the S. S.
White Company, manufacturer of dental chairs, mechanical
equipment, supplies, etc., is an excellent example are in
turn "merchandized" to the dental profession in the pro-
fessional publications. "Merchandizing" consists essentially of
advertisement of advertisements. The manufacturer points
out to the dentist how much he is doing to "educate" the
public to patronize the dentist, the implication being that
in consideration for the manufacturer's expenditure in such
"constructive" publicity, the dentist might well recommend
the particular product to his patients. In the case cited the
product was a good one, made according to a formula pre-
pared by an eminent dentist, and the advertising copy more
or less aggressively de-bunked the unscientific "talking-
points" of competing dentifrices. A number of manufac-
turers, notably Colgate, have followed this policy; others,
such as Forhan's, Pepsodent, Ipana, etc., have found it more
profitable to select a particular half -true talking point, ex-
aggerate it, use the simple technique of fear appeal, and while
continuing to seek the co-operation of the dental profession,
discount the opposition of the more sensitive and "ethical"
section of the profession.

Education of another sort, secured through fostering
the newspaper and magazine propaganda of "health talks,"
"preventive dentistry," etc., can rarely be made to benefit the
interest of any particular manufacturer. In general such
education is likely to be sound enough in intent, and at least
harmless in effect, although sometimes objected to by den-
tists on the ground that it is insufficiently critical and in-

149

formative, and does not could not, since the publication is
an advertising medium take issue with the bunk which is
spread on the advertising pages. If the press were or could be
a disinterested educational instrumentality it might be ex-
pected to correct the mis-education sponsored by its adver-
tisers, but then, if the press functioned in the interests of its
readers rather than in the interests of its advertisers, it would
not publish pseudo-scientific, more or less deceptive adver-
tising. Again, the press is merely an advertising "medium";
not until the ghosts which use this medium to materialize
their more or less sprightly profit-motivated antics not
until these ghosts are exorcized can we expect the press to be
anything except precisely what it is. Ethical judgments are
pretty much irrelevant. A "good" medium is not a medium
which materializes only good ghosts; a "good" medium is a
medium through which ghosts, good, bad and indifferent
can manifest themselves effectively. True, the more respect-
able mediums are prejudiced against the more disreputable
ghosts and exclude them from their pages. But such preju-
dices and exclusions are also likely to be economically rather
than ethically determined; the antics of the respectable
ghosts require, for their maximum effectiveness a decent
parlor half-light, not th ebawdy murk in which the direct-
by-mail peddlers of aphrodisiacs, abortifacients, and con-
traceptives squeal and gibber. And the bigger and better
ghosts spend more, and more reliably.

Another form of indirect education that which makes
use of our public schools has both its positive and negative
aspects. A familiar example of the positive use of this "me-
dium" of formal education is the "toothbrush drill" taught
children in the primary grades. Manufacturers of tooth-
brushes and of dentifrices have used and benefited by this
technique almost equally. They have enabled school boards
to economize by supplying free or at cost the literature used
in teaching dental hygiene, including various trick devices

150

for making education amusing to the young. Such education
is neither very good nor very bad in and of itself. But if a
competent teacher or school nurse happens to believe, as do
many dentists, that the toothbrush is a dubious blessing; that
it should be used in strict moderation if at all; that the use,
say, of dental floss, is considerably more valuable hygienically
such a school functionary is likely to encounter the pres-
sures by which heretics are disciplined unless she can get
the dental floss manufacturers to spring to her aid. And
finally, advertised toothbrushes and dentifrices are likely to
be absurdly overpriced; education which results in teaching
children to buy overpriced toothbrushes and dentifrices when
the use of ordinary table salt, with the occasional use of
dental floss, would constitute on the whole a more hygienic as
well as more economical regimen such education has a cer-
tain unmistakable ghostly quality.

But the negative aspect of the advertising controls oper-
ating on our publicly owned schools is vastly more important.
In recent years a new specialty has appeared in the teach-
ing of economics; it is called "consumption economics" and
concerns itself with the consumer as a factor in the economic
scheme; how can the consumer best serve his own interest?
What is an intelligently balanced budget for a given income
level? What items should be bought and how can such items
be bought most economically? What are the possibilities and
limits of such developments still embryonic in America
as consumers' co-operatives, credit unions, consumers' re-
search, etc.

On the surface there would seem to be merit in this idea
of "consumption economics." But ask the secretary of your
local chamber of commerce, or the business manager of the
local paper, or any prominent retailer what they think about
it. Or ask some of the consumption economists, such as
Robert Lynd, author of Middletoum, just how far they have
got in their attempts to introduce such courses in the schools.

The writer asked such questions; the answers were somewhat
disheartening. In conclusion he asked an even more naive
question: to whom do these public schools belong anyway?
The answer, of course, is that they belong to the people,
since all the people, directly or indirectly, pay taxes for their
support. But their use in the interest of all the people is sim-
ply impossible, because the interests of the people are divided
and conflicting. In the case of "consumption economics," any
attempt to perform for the masses of the population even
the modest service which Consumers' Research performs for
its 50,000 subscribers an expert measurement of the quali-
ties and values of products and services offered for sale is
and will be met by the united opposition of business and the
allies of business: manufacturers, distributors, bankers, pub-
lishers all the people who profit quite legitimately by sell-
ing products and services in as great a volume as possible and
for as much more than they are worth as the traffic will bear:
all these people and all the people whose political voices they
control: their employees, wives, sisters, uncles, aunts and
cousins even perhaps some of the cousins who would like
to consider themselves disinterested school superintendents
and teachers serving the interests of all the people. The op-
position is unqualified and rigorous. Business men are also in
a sense educators. They use advertising and its related de-
vices and techniques to "educate the consumer," to "break
down sales resistance"; your earnest "consumption econo-
mist" would like to use education to build up sales resistance.
But let him try to do it. Anybody who would want to cut
the Gordian knot of this "educational" dilemma with the
liberal sword of "ethics" is welcome to his pains.

In these few examples we have encountered advertising,
propaganda and education as parts of a single economic nexus.
It becomes necessary at this point to define these categories
more sharply and to show their interrelations.

The complex of phenomena is economic, institutional,

152

technical, psychological, whereas the tendency of current
criticism by liberal publicists has emphasized invidious eth-
ical judgments. Yet it is only by re-defining such value
judgments that the play of forces can be accurately described
and analyzed. It is even more important to avoid the artificial
isolation of phenomena which superficial moral and ethical
criticism engenders. What we are dealing with is the institu-
tional and ideological superstructure of competitive capital-
ism. Whether we take our cue from Marx or merely from
the respectable social ecologists, we may be sure that the
mutual interaction of social phenomena, whether categoried as
economic, sociological or psychological, is an immitigable fact;
that when we seem to find isolate, perverse and irreconcilable
elements in the picture, we are merely victims of our own
thought patterns, for there can be nothing mysterious or
isolate about the phenomena. The contemporary French his-
torian, Andre Siegfried, is obviously aware of the continuity
and mutual interaction of the social and economic phenomena
we have been describing when he writes, in America's Com-
ing of Age: "Under the direction of remarkably intelligent
men, publicity has become an important factor in the United
States and perhaps even the keynote of the whole economic
structure."

Note that M. Siegfried is using "publicity" as an inclu-
sive term to denote all forms of advertising, propaganda and
press agentry. The writer would both widen and sharpen this
inclusion by showing that the apparatus of newspaper and
periodical publishing, radio broadcasting, motion picture pro-
duction and distribution; with the conjoined apparatus of
advertising agencies, public relations experts, and dealers in
direct-by-mail, car card, and poster advertising, constitute
in effect a single institution; further, that the institutions
and techniques of formal education, both secondary and
collegiate, are also closely related and functional within the
general scheme; that the purpose and effect of these con-

153

joined institutions and techniques is rule; the shaping and
control of the economic, social and psychological patterns of
the population in the interests of a profit-motivated dom-
inant class, the business class.

The necessity of such broad inclusions in any systematic
analysis of the phenomena becomes apparent when we come
to define our major categories. The definition of advertising
offered by Frank Presbrey in his History and Development
of Advertising is as follows: "Advertising is printed, written,
or graphic salesmanship, deriving from oral salesmanship."
This, of course, should be corrected to include radio and mo-
tion picture advertising, but otherwise may be allowed to
stand. The point to be emphasized is that the practical ad-
vertising man views all these instruments of communication
newspapers, magazines, radio, motion picture as advertis-
ing media; that this is in fact the accurate, realistic and sig-
nificant view to take of these instruments of social communi-
cation, whereas the thought patterns of liberal laymen tend
to make them appear to represent some sort of ideal func-
tional relationship between editor and reader, or broadcaster
and Great Radio Public a relationship which these curious
parasitic growths, advertising and publicity, are insidiously,
immorally perverting. The layman sees that the tail is wag-
ging the dog. The advertising man knows that the tail is
the dog and acts accordingly. He knows that there is no real
separation between the business and editorial offices of a mod-
ern publication; that where such a separation appears to
obtain it is purely a management device, designed to insure
the more effective functioning of the publication as an ad-
vertising medium. He knows, for he is called in as a "pub-
lisher's consultant" to plan and execute the job that the
conception of a modern commercial publication starts with
the definition and segregation of a particular buying public,
which may be recruited and held together by a particular
type of editorial policy and content. The publisher's consult -

154

ant sees an unoccupied, or insecurely occupied niche in the
crowded spectrum of daily and periodical publishing. The
publication is thereupon concocted to the specifications nec-
essary to entertain or inform that particular section of the
buying public. The objective is not attained, however, until
the circulation so recruited is sold to advertisers at so much
per head, the charge being based on the average buying
power and the demonstrated "reader-interest" of the readers.
"Reader-interest" is measured by response to advertising and
the editorial content of the magazine is carefully designed,
as already indicated, to strengthen this response. You pay
your money and you take your choice, depending upon the
nature of your product or service and the methods by which
it is promoted. The readers of True Romances, for example,
are poor but numerous and credulous, whereas the readers of
The Sportsman are comparatively few, but very rich and
susceptible to the arts of flattery and sycophancy. In both
cases the collaboration of the editorial and business manage-
ments is intimate and accepted as a matter of course. Criti-
cism of such arrangements by the more or less obsolete criteria
of an ideal reader-editor relationship is beside the point, since
the determinants are the objective forces of the competitive
capitalist economy.

In propaganda we encounter a phenomenon even more dis-
turbing and puzzling to liberal publicists and sociologists,
especially since the experience of the war demonstrated the
dominance of this technique of social control in modern so-
cieties. Again, contemporary students have been frustrated
by their tendency to view the phenomenon as isolate and
adventitious.

The latest book on propaganda, which digests and sum-
marizes much that has been written on the subject by con-
temporary sociologists and publicists, is The Propaganda
Menace by Professor Frederic E. Lumley, of Ohio State Uni-
versity. Professor Lumley experiences much difficulty in

155

reaching a satisfactory definition of propaganda. After re-
jecting innumerable definitions offered by contemporary
educators and sociologists, he offers us the following:

Propaganda is promotion which is veiled in one way or another
as to (i) its origin or sources, (2) the interests involved, (3) the
methods employed, (4) the content spread and (5) the results
accruing to the victims any one, any two, any three, any four,
any five.

In Professor Lumley's view the contrasting opposite to
propaganda, necessary in defining any term, is "education."
And it is precisely there that his definition falls down, be-
cause of the highly conditioned and shifting quality of the
latter concept. More or less aware of these confusions, aware
that education must be related to some conception of social
change, Professor Lumley takes refuge in the relatively so-
phisticated and acute definition of education offered by Pro-
fessor Bode as follows:

When formal education becomes necessary in order to fit the
individual for his place in the social order, there arises a need for
reflection on the aims and purposes of education and of life. Many
aims have been proposed, but if we view intelligence from the
standpoint of development, the conclusion is indicated that aims
are constantly changing and that education is, as a matter of fact,
the liberation of capacity; or in Bagley's phraseology, it means
training for achievement. To make this liberation of capacity or
this process of growth a controlling ideal means the cultivation, of
sensitiveness to the human quality of subject matter by presenting
it in its social context. The fact that a given type of education is
classed as liberal or cultural is no guarantee that it fosters this
quality of mind. Unless this sensitiveness is deliberately cultivated,
many human interests, such as business, science and technical voca-
tions, do not become decently humanized. And to cultivate this

sensitiveness deliberately means that it is made the guiding ideal
for education.

In this definition Professor Bode recognizes the necessity of
relating education to social change. He does not, in the passage
quoted, take account of the dynamics of social change. One
does not need to insist upon a strict Marxian interpretation to
describe the essential nature of social change. It will be readily
granted by most readers that the conflict of pressure groups
within the social order results in shifting balances of power;
that these pressure groups tend to represent economic classes;
that the issues of conflict tend to be economic at bottom; that
the basic cause of change is the changing level of the produc-
tive forces in our day the machine technology. This is not
to ignore the equally real role played by pressure groups in
the fields of the social mores, religion, race, etc., but merely
to emphasize the economic and class roots of this perpetual
conflict, where propaganda is so powerfully instrumental.

If this is so, then there are certain crucial undefined terms
imbedded in Professor Bode's definition. What, for example, is
meant by "fitting the individual for his place in the social
order"? Obviously the students whom Professor Bode pro-
poses to educate after this fashion occupy not the same but
different places in our social order, which, while retaining a
certain residual fluidity manifests an increasing rigidity and
class stratification. To fit a third generation Rockefeller for
his place in the social order is obviously a task different from
that of fitting Isidore Bransky, son of a radical East Side pants
maker, for his place, which is a matter of strictly limited but
crucial choice, depending upon whether young Bransky leaves
his class or doesn't; whether he is fitted to become a labor
organizer, legal defense worker, radical journalist or merely
an energetic legal ambulance chaser, political fixer or other
capitalist functionary in business or in the professions. Should
or can the educator remain above the battle as respects this

157

choice? Will not the educational means by which capacity is
liberated necessarily affect it? Finally, would Professor Bode
attempt to deny that education in a typical university does
inevitably indoctrinate and that on the whole it indoctrinates
in the direction of conformity to the existing order? In
honesty, must not the teacher tell his student that ordinarily
he must save his body by serving an exploitative system and,
if possible save his soul by helping to destroy this system?

What is meant by presenting subject matter "in its social
context"? Whose social context? Does Professor Bode mean
by social context the contemporary class conflicts of American
capitalism exacerbated by the internal and international con-
flicts of our "surplus economy"? Does he mean the perhaps
imminent "freezing" of the capitalist structure into the cor-
porative forms of Fascism?

Returning to Professor Lumley, it might well be alleged
that in urging "education" as a preventive and cure of the
propaganda menace, Professor Lumley is really writing prop-
aganda for a particular concept of education: the concept of
an objective, disinterested effort to release capacity. Further,
it might be argued that this concept is doomed to remain in
the field of theory, since it is observably nonexistent in
practice. Finally, it may be suggested that to erect a purely
conceptual theory of education, while ignoring the contem-
porary practices and very real economic determinants of
educators and the institutions they work for, is itself a kind of
propaganda: propaganda by suppression which is one of Pro-
fessor Lumley's recognized categories.

The necessity of such realistic clarifications cannot be
evaded, and to Professor Bode's credit it must be said that he,
at least in his later, more advanced position does not try to
evade them. With Dewey, Counts and other modern educators
he acknowledges frankly that the theory of education pro-
pounded in the passage quoted above is applicable only in a
classless society.

Behold, then, this precious absolute, education, the hope of
democracy! The more we turn it up to the light, whether we
examine its practice or even its theory as expressed by leading
educators, the more it dissolves in relativity. And our crucial
problem remains with us: what is education and what is prop-
aganda with respect to the problems of the individual in
our society, faced as it is, with the self -preservative necessity
of fundamental social change?

If it were only possible to posit an ideal disinterested ob-
jectivity on the part of the educator, and an absence of
pressure controls operating upon our educational institutions,
the problem would be greatly simplified. But, as we have
seen, leading educators properly discard such claims. The
facts of class interest and individual subjectivity must be and
now are, generally admitted. The coercions of the social order,
for achievement in which the student is trained, these, too,
are frankly acknowledged. Recently Dr. Abraham Flexner
has noted with proper but perhaps futile indignation the ten-
dency to vocationalize our institutions of higher learning,
that is, to make them functional with respect to the require-
ments of business, and to the survival necessities of students.
And we have with us always the issue of "academic freedom":
the degree to which a teacher is permitted to express views
in conflict with the economic and social status quo. The under-
lying fact, of course, is that in both privately and publicly
supported educational institutions the interest and prejudices
of the ruling class are ultimately determining, whenever edu-
cation enters the field of contemporary social and political
struggle.

Many teachers, even of the social sciences, are quite uncon-
scious of these determinants and preserve the confident illu-
sion of "scientific objectivity" in the very act of asserting
creedal absolutes which are obviously a product of social and
economic class conditioning. Professor Lumley is himself a
conspicuous example of this. In his concluding chapter he

159

writes: "No sane person wants revolutionary communistic
propaganda spread in this country." Is this the language of an
objective, disinterested educator? Professor Lumley urges that
instead of deporting and lynching Reds, their agitation be
combatted (i) by destroying the soil of gullibility through
education and (2) by removing desperate need through
liberal reformism. Such recommendations may seem relatively
enlightened and civilized, but they are not quite sufficient to
rehabilitate Professor Lumley in his role of disinterested edu-
cator.

The dubiousness of his position would quickly appear under
circumstances such as the following: suppose that because
of the disinterested teaching of Dr. Lumley one of his students
had escaped the class-conditioned thought patterns of his
family and friends, or that, because of the logical capacities
released by education he had broken through these patterns.
Suppose that this student, having acquired some acquaintance
with Marx, Engels, Veblen, Lenin and others, should elect as
the subject of his doctor's thesis The Position of the Social
Scientist under American Capitalism. The application of the
Marxian analysis to this material might well result in "revolu-
tionary communistic propaganda." Would Professor Lumley
pronounce his student insane and withdraw his fellowship?
If not, should he not have to consider himself insane for per-
mitting the spread of "revolutionary communistic prop-
aganda"?

One thinks of a third solution for this imaginary academic
dilemma: shove the student back into the educational mill
and trust that on his re-emergence he would have more
sense. Then suggest to him, as an interesting subject for a
thesis, Paranoiac Traits in Modern Radical Leaders.

It is indeed difficult to escape the conviction that the god
of education, like other gods, is not merely man-made, but
made by a particular group of men as a rationalization of their
role in the complex struggle of social forces of "pressure

1 60

groups": further, that the institutions built up to exemplify
and discharge this role our schools and universities are
similarly subject to such rationalized determinants. The
claim of disinterestedness, of universality, is also made for
the press, although Professor Lumley has no difficulty in see-
ing that the latter institution becomes inevitably an instru-
ment of pressure groups. The same claim is even made for
business, the instrument of profit-motivated property own-
ers. All of these claims are of course equally invalid; none of
these institutions is separate or self-sufficient; all are swept
into the struggle of conflicting social forces; advertising,
propaganda and education are inextricably merged and inter-
twined.

The contemporary fact of this confusion is excellently il-
lustrated by the propaganda activities of the National Elec-
tric Light Association, to which Professor Lumley devotes an
indignant chapter. The investigation of the Federal Trade
Commission and the writings of H. S. Raushenbush, Ernest
Gruening and others have familiarized most readers with the
theory and practice of this propaganda campaign in behalf
of our privately owned light and power corporations. It will
be sufficient here to point out that the instruments of adver-
tising, propaganda and education were all used in such a
way as to reinforce each other, all contributing to the crude
economic objective of protecting and conserving the vested
interests of private property in exploiting for profit an es-
sential public service.

Direct, explicit, signed propaganda by the National Elec-
tric Light Association and its member companies was used in
the form of paid advertising. This provided an economic
leverage for the control of the news and editorial content of
the press as effecting the interests of the light and power
companies. Note that the press was in a bargaining position.
Newspaper publishers could and did on occasion threaten to
expose the iniquities of the "power trust" unless the local

161

companies could be brought to see the propriety of buying
advertising space in their papers. Once this concession was
made, the papers willingly "co-operated" with the NELA
campaign, by printing the propaganda furnished by the pub-
licity directors in the form of mats, boiler plate and mime-
ographed releases. One interesting and important point is
totally missed by Professor Lumley. In the case of the NELA
campaign, as of other propagandas by vested commercial in-
terests, what was in effect a method of control by bribery
(blackmail from the point of view of the NELA) was prac-
ticable only with respect to the smaller and less powerful
newspapers, just as it was only the less eminent professors
who accepted fees for making speeches and writing texts fa-
vorable to the power interests. Integrity, as Stuart Chase has
pointed out, is a luxury in our civilization. It is, with certain
qualifications, one of the privileges of wealth and power. No
evidence was produced to show that the NELA had bribed
the New York Times. Attempts were made to influence the
Associated Press, but that is a mutual corporation, in which
the pressure upon individual members backs up inevitably
upon the directing officials.

On the other hand, it is equally important to note that it
wasn't necessary to bribe the New York Times, and that,
stupid as the NELA publicity directors proved themselves to
be, they probably had more sense than to try to bribe either
the Times or other major publishing corporations. Yet the
editorials in the Times, and its handling of public utility news,
especially with respect to the private versus public ownership
issue, have been pretty consistently favorable to the power
interests. Why? Obviously, because the Times is itself a major
capitalist property. It is part of the complex of financial,
business and social relationships which produces what is called
a "conservative" point of view. The owners and managers who
express and make effective this point of view are often not
aware of the economic and social pressures which influence

162

them. They act unconsciously, much as an experienced driver
operates an automobile he is "part of the car." The specific
allegiance rarely becomes overt and fully conscious.

Respectable and powerful newspapers and magazines can-
not be expected to swallow and approve the rawer aspects of
contemporary commercial propaganda. The Times duly
slapped the wrist of the National Electric Light Association,
following the exposures of the Federal Trade Commission. It
did not go down the line for Mr. Doheny and Secretary Fall
during the Teapot Dome scandal, though from time to time it
deprecates Congressional investigations as in general "bad
for business."

Some service not only lip service but actual service is
due the concept of a "free press" and a modicum of such serv-
ice can usually be obtained even by radical minority groups.
The amount and quality of such service is determined by the
circumstances of the individual case. The major determining
factors are: the inherent news value of the incident and its
relation to other current news; the success with which cur-
rent liberal concepts of free speech, legal rights, etc., can be
appealed to; the class origin and political orientation of the
reporter who covers the story; the current pressures of local,
national and foreign news; the reputation of the radical prop-
agandist as a reliable news source; the mass pressure brought
to bear upon the newspaper.

The writer has served as a commercial publicity man, an
advertising man and as a radical propagandist. All these
techniques require careful measurement and utilization of the
forces operative in a given complex of public relations.
Neither as a commercial propagandist nor as a radical prop-
agandist is it intelligent to act on the assumption that the
capitalist press is "kept," to use the familiar half -true radical
jibe. It must always be remembered that the press has to
"keep" itself; that it has its own particular values, traditions
and technical requirements to conserve. Although, primarily

because of the dominance of advertising, the press functions
in general as an organ of business, it functions with relation
to circulations which usually include a variety of more or less
organized and articulate pressure groups. Also, journalism is
a profession with an ethical tradition. Both the somewhat
eroded and romantic professional traditions of journalism and
our somewhat debilitated concepts of democratic freedom
and fair play can still be used to temper the winds of "public
opinion" to the shorn lambs of radical protest and agitation
especially when mass pressure in the form of protests,
strikes, and demonstrations is used to force the issue.

Yet it must be confessed that these are all frail reeds to lean
upon in a pinch, especially if the pinch is local. To illustrate
this last point, it is sufficient to point to the contrast between
the handling of the 1931 disorders in the Kentucky coal
fields by the Kentucky press, as against the performance of the
distant metropolitan journals and press associations. The local
editors editorialized against the "Red menace," and in their
news reporting suppressed and distorted the unquestionable
facts of starvation of strikers, discrimination in the admin-
istration of public and private relief, the capture of the ma-
chinery of justice by the coal corporations and the violence
of middle-class mobs. True, on that occasion the Associated
Press also broke down, because the local A. P. reporter hap-
pened to be also one of the leaders of the middle-class mob
which illegally deported one of the successive delegations of
writers and students which entered the strike area to bring
relief to the strikers and to report the facts of the situation
to the country at large. But the protests of Dos Passos and
others were effective on that occasion: the offending A. P.
correspondent was dismissed. And shortly afterward the New
York Times sent a special correspondent, Mr. Louis Stark, to
Harlan County, where he did an honest and competent re-
porting job in a series of signed articles.

A similar situation developed in connection with the

164

Scottsboro case, in which seven negro boys faced legal lynch-
ing in a situation growing out of race prejudice and conflict
fostered by ruling-class economic interests. The evidence on
which the boys were convicted, later shown to have been
largely perjured, was accepted pretty much without question
by almost the entire Southern press. The lynch atmosphere
surrounding the first trial was largely suppressed. The case
was consistently "played down" throughout the South. Citi-
zens of New York learned more about the Scottsboro case
through the papers than citizens of Alabama. As a result of
the efforts of the International Labor Defense, a Communist-
led organization, a new trial was ordered by the United States
Supreme Court. The boys were again convicted by a jury
obviously swayed by anti-negro, anti-Jew and anti-radical
appeals to prejudice. But the New 'York Times reporter, Mr.
F. W. Daniell, reported the trial with notable accuracy and
fairness, whereas the Southern press for the most part con-
tinued the policy of suppression and distortion, dictated by
the pressures of local and regional ruling-class prejudice and
interests. In this case the factor of professional pride entered
also into the equation. The prosecution made the mistake of
treating Mr. Daniell and other correspondents with scant
courtesy. Promptly and without trepidation, Mr. Daniell, both
in his personal conduct and in his dispatches, made it clear
that the Alabama authorities were in no position to bully
and coerce the correspondent of the New York Times.

The press handling of the communist-led Hunger March to
Washington in the fall of 1932 provides another interesting
example. In this case the Hoover Administration broadcast ap-
peals to State and local authorities to "stop the Hunger
March." The evidence is overwhelming that the press, actu-
ated by the alarm of the administration and of business, un-
dertook more or less concertedly to play down and ridicule
the demonstration. The dispatches, both while the columns
were enroute to Washington and after their arrival, were so

i6 5

colored and so flagrantly editorialized as to surprise even ex-
perienced radical organizers. The demonstrators were "neither
hungry nor marching." The March was treated as a Com-
munist publicity stunt and both the leaders and the rank and
file were consistently ridiculed. Radio and news reels joined
this hostile chorus. But in the end, after the Washington
police had executed their melodramatic coup, and the 3,000
marchers were practically imprisoned on a stretch of wind-
swept highway on the outskirts of the capital, the unity of the
conservative press front began to crack.

There were several factors in this partial failure of the
anti-communist propaganda. In the first place, the Commu-
nist organizers of the Unemployed Councils, hugely handi-
capped as they were by lack of funds and by the terrified
inertia of the destitute unemployed workers, had by sheer
drive and energy accomplished a notable feat in bringing the
three columns of marchers to a point of convergence on the
capital within a few hours of each other. In the second place
the more radical working class groups in the cities through
which they passed had cheered the marchers, aided them with
contributions of food and shelter, and otherwise counter-
acted the efforts of the authorities to disintegrate and abort
the enterprise. In the third place, Herbert Benjamin, the Com-
munist Director of the march, proved himself to be a cool,
resourceful, courageous and humanly appealing leader. He
contrasted favorably with Major (Duck -Legs) Brown, who
directed the forces of the District of Columbia police. The
genuine discipline of the marchers contrasted favorably with
the provocative brutality and obvious unfairness of the
police. Protests, sponsored by more or less well-known liberals,
and invoking the rights of free speech, appeal to the govern-
ment, etc., were duly printed in the conservative papers.
From the publicity point of view, the most effective effort on
the radical side was the delegation of socially prominent New
York women which came to Washington and protested to

166

Vice President Curtis and various Congressmen and Senators.
Known radicals, however prominent, are comparatively use-
less for such purposes; their protests are not "news" and the
conservative press virtuously plays them down as "publicity-
seekers."

In the case of the Washington Hunger March the protests
of the prominent liberals and radicals helped, but what helped
most was the fact that Hoover, his official family and the
brass hats of the army were personally unpopular with the
Washington correspondents and with the staff members of
the local papers. This unpopularity was a factor in the forth-
right protests and the vigorous news writing which accom-
panied and followed Hoover's expulsion of the Bonus Army a
few months before. The Washington News printed the fla-
grant facts of police brutality and provocation and editori-
ally protested (The News is the local Scripps-Howard paper
and the city editor happened to be a liberal, as well as per-
sonally popular with the newspaper fraternity. ) At this point
the hitherto almost unanimous hostility of the capitalist press
began to falter. The disparity of forces, as between the
microscopic army of determined, but unarmed and unviolent
marchers, and the armed might of the government police
and military made the administration's effort to convert the
demonstration into a Red scare seem a little ridiculous. The
climax came when Benjamin executed his hair-raising "dress-
rehearsal," after which he had said: "Tomorrow we march."
The next day came the official order permitting the marchers
to enter Washington.

What, by the way, was this performance? In its essence it
was propaganda, or if you like, education, in one of its high-
est manifestations: that of strategic, dramatic action. It had
its effect, despite the effort of the conservative press to sup-
press and distort its significance and muffle its reverberations.

With respect to this case there are a number of interesting
points to be noted. First, the Washington press, especially the

News, treated the marchers more fairly on the whole than
the New York papers. In some instances the latter headlined
the dispatches of their correspondents in such a way as to
distort, always in derision of the marchers, the true bearing
of the story.

The apparent reversal of the usual in such situations is sim-
ply explained. In this case the pinch was not so much local
as national. The ruling-class and middle-class interests and
prejudices served by the capitalist press throughout the coun-
try were vigorously hostile to the Communists and especially
hostile to that particular demonstration. But in Washington
thousands of people had witnessed the inept and brutal per-
formance of the police. Although middle-class Washington
public opinion was in general hostile or indifferent to the
marchers, Washington didn't like Hoover, nor did it like the
repetition, by a defeated and discredited administration, of
tactics rawer if anything than those employed against the
Bonus Army.

The Washington papers did nothing comparable to the ex-
ploit of a Daily News reporter who invented out of whole
cloth and published a speech alleged to have been made by
Herbert Benjamin, violently inciting his followers to a blood-
thirsty attack upon Washington. Theoretically, the News
couldn't do such a thing because it is a mass paper sold to
"Sweeney," the working man or at least its promotion
literature so alleges. It was the Struggle of Sweeney that Ben-
jamin was supporting. Actually, something of the sort was
to be expected. The News uses sensational tabloid methods to
exploit, for purely commercial purposes, the economic illiter-
acy and the economic and psychological helplessness of its
readers. The News is a business property, a commercial,
profit-making enterprise, and an advertising medium.

With the foregoing case histories in mind, let us return
to our major categories, advertising, propaganda and educa-
tion, and examine once more the liberal views of Professor

168

Lumley and others. The thing to look for in any system of
social communication is the point of control. Obviously, the
key phenomenon is advertising, which is in turn merely an
instrument of competitive business. A commercial publica-
tion is an advertising medium, that is to say, an instrument
by which advertisers, with the complex of interests and prej-
udices which they represent, shape and control the economic,
social and political patterns of the literate population: di-
rectly through the signed advertisements themselves; indi-
rectly through the controlled or influenced editorial content
of the publication; indirectly through the controlled or in-
fluenced content of formal education in the schools and col-
leges.

When a powerful vested interest, such as the electric power
industry, wishes by means of propaganda to shape public opin-
ion favorably to its interests, it is advertising that enables it
readily to employ the instruments of the daily and periodical
press, radio, motion picture, etc., for this purpose. Advertising
is, of course, itself propaganda, but more important, the grant-
ing or withholding of an advertising contract offers a means
of bribing or coercing indirect propaganda in the editorial
columns of the publication. Finally, where such bribery or
coercion is impracticable, as in the case of powerful publica-
tions like the Times, the same end is secured by reason of
the fact that the Times is an advertising medium. As such it
is an instrument of business, and its editorial policies are
conditioned by the pressures of the dominant economic
forces.

Professor Lumley exclaims at the omnipresence of propa-
ganda. Our civilization, he says is "spooky" with the ghosts of
propaganda hiding behind every bush. The professor has had
nerves. Propaganda is no more and no less omnipresent than
the vested interests of competing and conflicting economic
and social pressure groups. The balance of power is held by
business, which, through advertising, controls the instruments

169

of social communication. There is nothing mysterious about
it, nothing moral, nothing ethical and nothing disinterested.
How could there be? Miracles don't happen in the body poli-
tic any more than they do in the physical body of man.

Advertising is propaganda, advertising is education, propa-
ganda is advertising, education is propaganda, educational in-
stitutions use and are used by advertising and propaganda.
Shuffle the terms any way you like, any one, any two, any
three, to paraphrase Professor Lumley. What emerges is the
fact that it is impossible to dissociate the phenomena, and
that all three, each in itself, or in combination are instru-
ments of rule.

Whether the use of these instruments is veiled or overt will
doubtless continue to be a matter of grave ethical concern to
liberals like Professor Lumley. But the majority of the propa-
ganda to which he objects is overt.

Every journalist knows this. The editors of The New Yorker
are journalists, highly competent and sophisticated in that
field, and they take great pleasure in jibing at the bizarre
efforts of the "public relations" experts. On occasion they
become as disgusted as any man about town can permit him-
self to become without risk of rumpling his hair. The fol-
lowing comment from Talk of the Town in its issue of
Feb. 10, 1934, is an example. The note is headed Many Happy
Returns and I quote the first and the concluding sentences :

The Quadruple-Screw Turbo-Electric Vessel Queen of Bermuda,
Capt. H. Jeffries Davis, was the scene last week of a novel birth-
day party for President Roosevelt and the Warm Springs Founda-
tion on behalf of the Bermuda News Bureau, the Furness Bermuda
Line, the Fashion Originators Guild, and Island Voyager Magazine,
by special arrangement with James Montgomery Flagg, Howard
Chandler Christy, Carl Mueller, John LaGatta, McClelland Barclay,
forty mannequins, the six most beautiful girls in America and
Lastex. Mrs. James Roosevelt, mother of the President, received. . . .

170

Her son, Franklin, in whose honor the party was given, was
fifty-two years old; and there were moments . . . when we won-
dered whether the country he has been working so hard to save
was worth the effort.

One is moved to ask Professor Lumley if there is anything
insidious or lacking in frankness about this extraordinary
synthesis of personal, political, philanthropic and commercial
propaganda? Let us consider for a moment, realistically, this
question of the veiled or overt use of the instruments of
social communication as a problem in tactics. One admits
that the public which sees the end result only is frequently
unaware of the origins of propaganda. But ordinarily the
propagandist himself proceeds quite overtly in manipulating
his instruments.

Advertising is overt enough as to its origin or sources be-
cause it is signed by the advertiser. The interest involved is
overt; the advertiser wants to sell you something for more
than it is worth, so that he can make a profit on the transac-
tion. The method is more or less tricky, since it usually in-
volves taking advantage of the economic, social and psycho-
logical naivete of the reader. The results accruing to the reader
or to the advertiser are pretty much unpredictable as to
either party.

The majority of successful propaganda practice, whether by
commercial "public relations counsellors" like Edward Ber-
nays and Ivy Lee or by radical propagandists is overt; the
name of the propagandist or the company or organization he
represents is typed or printed at the top of his release. Some-
times commercial interests use dummy organizations as a
"front." For example, the munitions makers are more or less
back of the National Security League, just as the Communists
are more or less back of various peripheral organizations in
the field of labor defense, relief, etc. But to suppose that the
hard-boiled publishers and editors of the commercial press are

taken in by these fronts is to be impossibly na'ive. Also, in the
case of a powerful commercial client, such as, for example, the
Rockefeller interests, Mr. Lee has everything to gain by
having the release come from 26 Broadway. And in the case
of the radical propagandist, nothing makes the city desk so
suspicious and sour as clumsy attempts at indirection. As
already pointed out, Benjamin's "dress-rehearsal" of the Hun-
ger March into Washington was excellent propaganda and
surely that was overt enough. Admittedly, occasional veiled
publicity coups come off successfully; but the percentage of
such triumphs is relatively negligible and the backlash the
next time you try to make the papers more than wipes out
your gains.

The publicity Machiavellis of the National Electric Light
Association were the laughing stock of the public relations
profession and the catastrophe which befell them was cheer-
fully predicted long before it happened. They failed precisely
because they were not sufficiently overt. So far as the press
was concerned, all they had to do was to walk in the front
door of the business office, sign their advertising contracts and
get pretty nearly everything they wanted. Expense? "The
public pays the expense," to quote Deak Aylesworth's classic
line. Instead of which they employed the most extraordinary
collection of publicity incompetents that has ever been assem-
bled under one tent. They were equally stupid when it came
to professors. All they succeeded in hiring were cheap aca-
demic hacks who in the end did them more harm than good.

As already pointed out, business can influence or control our
schools and universities when it wants to or feels that it has
to. Professor Lumley's ideal purification of the educational
function falls down at this point and at a number of others,
suggested in the following questions: how does an educator,
unless one grants an inconceivably psychological self-aware-
ness, know whether or not be is "veiling" the origin or sources
of his instruction, the interests involved, the methods in-

172

volved or the content spread? How can he anticipate the
results accruing to the victims of either education or propa-
ganda?

Apparently, what chiefly confuses liberals like Professor
Lumley is the residual ideological and institutional debris of
"democracy." The thing becomes instantly explicit and forth-
right when rule is exercised by a dictatorship and competi-
tion for rule is eliminated by force. The liberal illusions of a
free press, free radio, free speech, constitutional rights, objec-
tive education, etc., all disappear almost overnight. This has
been happening under our eyes in Russia, Italy and Ger-
many. Do liberals have to be cracked on the head before they
can see it?

Pinkevitch, in his Education in Soviet Russia, classifies
propaganda, and agitation as forms of education operating on
somewhat lower intellectual levels. Press, radio, schools, col-
leges, are all owned and operated by the state as instruments
of rule in behalf of the ruling class, the class of workers and
peasants. The purpose for which these instruments are used
is to make Communists, just as they are used in Italy to make
Fascists, and in America to make our curious menagerie of
capitalists, capitalist snuggle-pups, saps, suckers, morons,
snobs, pacifists, militarists, wets, drys, Communists, liberals,
New Dealers, double dealers and Holy Rollers.

In America the industry is hugely ramified but the under-
lying motivations, controls and mechanisms are relatively
simple, although, of course, as in any transitional period of
social conflict, the balance of power is constantly shifting. A
capitalist democracy is a state of conflict almost by definition.
Rather than to catalogue these conflicts, expressing them-
selves in the form of propaganda, it would seem more profita-
ble to accept our instruments of social communication for
what they are: instruments of rule; then to describe how these
instruments are used, in whose behalf and to what end.

173

CHAPTER

TRUTH IN ADVERTISING

THE conception of "Truth in Advertising" is at once the
least tenable and the most necessary tenet of the ad-man's
doctrine. This contradiction arises from the fact that the
advertising business is essentially an enterprise in the exploita-
tion of belief.

It is untenable because profit-motivated business, in its rela-
tions with the consumer, is necessarily exploitative not mod-
erately and reasonably exploitative, but exploitative up to the
tolerance limit of the traffic. This tolerance limit is determined
not by ethical considerations, which are strictly irrelevant,
but by the ability of the buyer to detect and penalize dis-
honesty and deception. This ability varies with the individual,
but in general reaches its minimum in the case of the isolated
ultimate consumer.

No manufacturer, in buying his raw materials or his
mechanical equipment, trusts the integrity of the seller except
in so far as he is obliged to do so. So far as possible, he protects
himself by specifications, inspections and tests, and by legally
enforceable contracts that penalize double-dealing.

But when the manufacturer or retailer turns to selling his
finished product to the ultimate consumer, the situation is
reversed and the elements are sharply different. In his natural
state the ultimate consumer is ignorant enough in all con-
science. But he is not permitted to remain in his natural state.
It would be unprofitable, unbusinesslike, to leave him in his

174

natural state. Hence business has developed the apparatus of
advertising, which, as the editor of the leading advertising
trade publication has pointed out,* is scarcely a thing in
itself, but merely a function of business management.

That function is not merely to sell customers, but to manu-
facture customers. Veblen, with his customary precision, has
indicated both the object and the technique of this function:

The production of customers by sales publicity is evidently the
same thing as the production of systematized illusions organized
into serviceable "action patterns" serviceable, that is, for the use
of the seller in whose account and for whose profit the customer is
being produced.

What has honesty or truth to do with this business? A great
deal, because the idea of truth is a highly exploitable asset.
Always, the customer must be made to feel that the seller
is honest and truthful and that he needs or wants the product
offered for sale. Hence the advertising business becomes an
enterprise in the coincident manufacture and exploitation of
reader-confidence and reader-acceptance. In this respect the
ad-man's technique is not essentially different from that of
any vulgar confidence man whose stock in trade is invariably
a plausible line of chatter about his alleged "trustfulness"
and "honesty." The writer has watched these gentry operat-
ing all the way from Los Angeles to Coney Island. Their
annual "take," while less than that of their respectable cousins
in the advertising business, is still enormous. Their techniques
and successes, if studied by sociologists, would I am convinced,
yield valuable data regarding the contemporary American
social psychology.

Once, at Signal Hill, near Long Beach, California, the writer
permitted an oil stock salesman to give him transportation
from Los Angeles to the oil well, and to lead him through the

Roy Dickinson, president of Printers' Ink, in "Advertising Careers.'

175

successive steps by which the "sucker" is noosed, thrown and
shorn. The prospects, consisting of about a hundred more or
less recently arrived Middle Western farmers, their wives and
children, seemed naively appreciative of the hot dogs and
coffee, and of the genuinely accomplished sales histrionism
which they were getting free. One saw that they were devout
believers in magic of the cruder sorts, ranging from funda-
mentalism, through rugged individualism, and spreading into
the more exotic side-shows of Yoga, the Apostle of Oom,
numerology, spiritualism, etc., etc., which at that time in-
fested Los Angeles and still do. Their faces were weather-
worn, their hands were stubby. They were indeed enormously
decent and hard-working people with less effective knowl-
edge of their social environment than any African savage.

At the climax of the performance, after an oil-smeared
ex-vaudevillian had rampaged up the aisle proclaiming that
"No. 6 had just come in at ten thousand gallons," a scatter-
ing few came forward and signed on the dotted line. They
did so with a kind of hypnotized masochism I am convinced
that many of them were instinctively aware that they were
being gypped.

In lieu of buying any of the promoter's exquisitely en-
graved optimism, I took him aside afterward and explained
that as an advertising writer, engaged in advertising a nearby
subdivision a strictly legitimate enterprise out of which
many of the buyers made a good deal of money I, too, had
a stake in the matter. He was only momentarily embarrassed.
Later, on the basis of our professional kinship, I got to know
him sufficiently so that, warmed by a little liquor, he became
approximately confidential.

"Brother," I remember his saying (He always insisted on
calling me "brother") , "the technique of this racket is simple.
Always tell the truth. Tell a lot of the truth. Tell a lot more
of the truth than anybody expects you to tell. Never tell the
whole truth."

My colleague omitted one important element from his for-
mula, the element of emotional conviction, which I had seen
him manipulate with devastating effectiveness. It is observ-
able that the most charlatans, like the best advertising men,
are always more than half sincere and honest according to
their lights. Sincerity is indeed a great virtue in an ad-man,
and if one has it not, one must at least feign it. In this con-
nection I recall the experience of a friend who took leave of
the advertising business after some years of competent and
highly paid employment in that business. Her employer, while
acknowledging her competence, had this to say on the occasion
of her resignation:

"Miss , you are an able person and a good worker.

In my judgment you have only one fault. You are not loyal
to the things you don't believe in."

At first glance this statement would seem to plunge us into
the deep water of metaphysics. But the exegesis is simple. The
possession of a personal code of ethics is a handicap in the
practice of advertising-as-usual, the business being above all
else impersonal, and in fact so far as possible de-humanized.
One must be loyal to the process, which is a necessary part
of the total economic process of competitive acquisition. The
god of advertising is a jealous god and tolerates no competing
loyalties, no human compunctions, no private impurities of
will and judgment.

The yoke of this jealous god chafes. How could it be other-
wise, unless one were to suppose that advertising men are a
selected class of knaves and rascals? They are, of course, noth-
ing of the sort. They are average middle-class Americans, a
bit more honest, I suspect, than the average banker or lawyer.
In their personal lives they are likely to be kindly, truthful,
just and generous. They would doubtless like to be equally
truthful and just in the conduct of their business. But this,
in the nature of the case, is impossible. The alternatives are
either a cynical, realistic acceptance, or heroic gestures of

177

rationalization. Hence the tremendous pother that advertising
men make about "truth in advertising"; or at least, that is
half of the explanation. The other half lies in the business-like
necessity of keeping advertising in good repute; of nursing
the health of that estimable goose, reader-confidence. Are they
sincere, these advertising men who conduct this "truth-in-
advertising" propaganda which is echoed and re-echoed by
editors, publicists, economists, sociologists, preachers, poli-
ticians? How can one tell, and does it really matter?

Quite obviously, advertising is an enterprise in special plead-
ing conducted outside the courts of law, with no effective
rules of evidence, no expert representation for the consumer,
no judge and no jury. To continue the analogy: in a court of
law the accused swears to tell "the truth, the whole truth,
and nothing but the truth," but if he is guilty nobody expects
him to do so. The attorney for the defense is theoretically
bound by his code of legal ethics, by penalties for contempt
of court, suborning of witnesses, etc. In practice he usually
makes out the best possible case for his client, using truth,
half-truth and untruth with pragmatic impartiality. More-
over, the judge and the jury expect him to do precisely that,
just as they expect the State's attorney to use all possible means
to secure a conviction. Judge and jury are in theory, and
ordinarily in practice, disinterested. They balance one barrage
of special pleading against the other, and so arrive at a verdict
based on the evidence.

It is generally recognized that a defense attorney does not
tell the truth, or permit the truth to be told, if he thinks this
truth would prejudice the case of his client. Why should it be
supposed that an advertising writer, employed to sell goods
for a manufacturer or retailer, can afford to tell the truth,
the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, and refrain from
befuddling the judgment of his prospect? In practice he tells
precisely as much of the truth as serves the interest of the
advertiser, and precisely as much expedient half-truth and

untruth as he believes he can get away with, without impair-
ing "reader-confidence." If it seems profitable to scare, shame
and flatter his victim he does so unhesitatingly. If bought -
and-paid-for testimonials will do the trick many agencies buy
them. If the fastidiousness or timidity of the publisher, the
barking of the Federal Trade Commission and the Food and
Drug Administration, or the protests of the reforming wing
of the profession make it seem desirable to conceal the fact
that these testimonials were bought and paid for, such a con-
cealment is effected.

Privately, the cynics of the profession will tell you that this
is the prevailing practice, including their own practice. Hav-
ing learned to digest their ethical sins, they have no need of
rationalizing them. These cynics leave the "reform of adver-
tising" to their more illusioned colleagues of whom they tend
to be coarsely contemptuous. The plaint of the reformers
vulgarly referred to by the cynics as the "Goose Girls" runs
somewhat as follows:

"The exaggerations, the sophistries, the purchased testi-
monials, the vulgarities, the outright falsifications of current
advertising are quite intolerable. Such practices are destroying
the faith, the illusions, the very will-to-live of 'reader con-
fidence/ They constitute unfair competition. The irrespon-
sible agencies and advertisers who are guilty of such practices
are endangering the stability, the good repute, and the profits
of the advertising profession as a whole."

To this plaint the cynics retort somewhat after this fashion:

"You fellows prate a great deal about 'truth in advertis-
ing.' What do you mean, truth, and what has the truth got
to do with this racket? You say we are killing that estimable
goose, reader-confidence, the goose that lays the golden eggs
of advertising profits. Nonsense. It wasn't the goose that
squawked. It was you. And the reason you squawked was not
because you really give a whoop about 'truth,' but because we,
with our more sophisticated, more scientific practice, have

179

been chiselling into your business. We can prove and have
proved that bought-and-paid-for testimonials sell two to one
as compared to your inept cozenage, your primitive appeals
to fear, greed and emulation. Furthermore, the ethics of adver-
tising communications is relative and must be flexible. You
have to take into account both the audience to which such
communications are addressed and the object which these
communications are intended to achieve, and demonstrably
do achieve.

"The audience, by and large, is composed of 1 4-year-old
intelligences that have no capacity for weighing evidence, no
experience in doing so, and no desire to do so. That goes
equally for the readers of Vogue and the readers of True
Romances. They are effectively gulled by bought-and-paid-
for testimonials and even appear to take some pleasure in
being gulled. They buy on the basis of such corrupt, false
and misleading evidence, and this way of selling them costs
less than any other way we have discovered. It is, you will
grant, our duty as advertisers and as advertising agencies
acting in behalf of our clients, to advertise as efficiently as
possible, thereby reducing the sales overhead which must ulti-
mately be charged to the consumer: thereby, incidentally,
safeguarding and increasing the profits of the companies in
which hundreds of thousands of widows and orphans, directly
or indirectly, have invested their all. It is our duty to use every
means we can devise, truthful or untruthful, ethical or un-
ethical, to persuade consumers to buy, since only by increased
buying can the country be pulled out of this depression. Ours
is the higher morality. The burden of restoring prosperity is
on our shoulders. We have seen our duty and we are doing it."

Thus the cynics, in private. I must confess that I have de-
rived far greater intellectual pleasure from the utterances of
such hard-boiled devil's disciples than from the plaintive
reproaches and lamentations of the Goose Girls. One could
wish, indeed, that the cynics were more outspoken. Unfor-

180

tunately, rationalization is the order of the day, in business
as in politics. Every week sees another proclamation of the
new order of probity upon which business is entering under
the New Deal. Even Kenneth Collins. . . . One is disap-
pointed to see so able and interesting an advertising man
pledge himself to the Goose Girl Sorority. But consider the
recent advertising of Gimbels department store in New York.
Mr. Collins is Gimbels' advertising manager, having recently
transferred his talents from Macy's across the street, where
he had achieved a notable success by exploiting the slogan
"It's smart to be thrifty."

Mr. Collins, judged by his writings in the trade press, is
something of a realist. One can only conclude therefore, that
when he assumed his new duties, his survey of the situation
convinced him that radical measures were needed for the
effective exploitation of belief. Here is the advertisement in
which the new "slant" was announced:

GIMBELS

TELLS THE

WHOLE

TRUTH

Every intelligent person will join us in a great new campaign for
truth in advertising. And by truth we mean the whole truth, and
nothing but the truth exactly what you demand of a witness
before a Senate Committee, or of your own children at home.

Let us tell you a straight story.

For years on end, we at Gimbels have been thinking that we were
telling the truth. We have been supported in our belief by "the
custom of the business," by "trade privilege," by reports from the
Better Business Bureau of New York and by the comments of our
customers.

But what we have been telling was, so to speak, "commercial
truth." We would tell you, quite honestly, that a certain pair of
curtains had been copied, in design, from a famous model, that the

181

colors were pleasing, that the price was very low. Every word of this
was scrupulously true. But we may have failed to say that the cur-
tains would probably fade after one or two seasons of wear.

In the same way, we would tell you that certain dresses had
materials of good quality, that the styles were fresh, and the price
very reasonable. Every word of this was scrupulously true. But we
may have failed to add that the workmanship was by machine rather
than by hand, and therefore the price was low.

We believe it is time to take a revolutionary step, in line with the
beliefs of the Administration, and of the opinions of intelligent
people everywhere. We believe that old-fashioned "commercial
truth" has no place in the New Deal. From now on, all Gimbels
advertising (and every word told you by a Gimbel salesman or sales-
woman) will be

The truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

How are we going to assure this? It is human to make mistakes,
and we may make them. If so, we want them called to our atten-
tion. We will gladly and willingly print corrections. But we believe
we will make few errors, for this reason: as a check on our store
buyers, and our advertising writers, we have employed the services
of a famous outside research laboratory

THE INDUSTRIAL BY-PRODUCTS AND RESEARCH CORPORATION OF

PHILADELPHIA

to make frequent scientific tests of the materials, workmanship and
value of the goods we offer for sale. This is one of the best equipped
laboratories of its kind in the United States, with a reputation of
many years of service to many of the largest industrial corporations
in this country. They are experts in textiles, and chosen for this
reason, because 80% of our merchandise is either textile or de-
pendent on textile for wear.

They have no human or partisan reason to give us the benefit of
any doubt. They will give us impartial tests and reports.

Please read our advertising in today's News, Journal, Sun and
World-Telegram. Bear in mind when you read the advertising of
this firm that

GIMBELS TELLS THE TRUTH
182

Note the astute dedication to intelligence, morality and unity
of interest which is implicit in the first paragraph. Just what
is the nature of this "revolutionary step, in line with the be-
liefs of the Administration, and of the opinions of intelli-
gent people everywhere," which Gimbels, under the leader-
ship of Mr. Collins, has taken?

Instead of contenting itself, as in the past, with telling
that part of the truth which might be expected to promote
sales, and suppressing the part which would tend to discour-
age or prevent sales, the store pledges itself to "tell the whole
truth." For example, whereas it had previously described a
piece of cloth truthfully as being good value, it would add
in the future, the further truth that it would quickly fade;
it would say that a raincoat, while worth the price asked,
would last only a year.

One readily admits that this does represent a certain gain
for the consumer a gain brought about either by the evan-
gelical enthusiasm of Gimbels and Mr. Collins for the New
Deal, or, possibly, by the coincident collapse of the con-
sumer's confidence and the consumer's pocketbook, and the
consequent stiffening of his sales resistance. Mr. Collins is to
be credited for his astuteness in recognizing and dealing with
this condition. In fairness one should also credit him with a
personal, though far from unique preference for fair deal-
ing, as against the customary chicaneries of salesmanship and
advertising.

But and this but is important Gimbels is a profit mo-
tivated corporation, engaged, like any other business, in buy-
ing as cheaply as possible and selling as dearly as possible.
The Industrial By-Products and Research Corporation of
Philadelphia will undoubtedly tell the whole truth and noth-
ing but the truth to Gimbels, because it is employed by Gim-
bels, and, in respect to this specific service at least, is respon-
sible to Gimbels and to Gimbels alone. But will Gimbels pass
on this whole truth and nothing but the truth to its cus-

183

tomers and to the readers of its advertising? The whole truth,
including the truth about Gimbels' profit-margin all the
data which the customer would require in order to measure
value? No such proposal is made. At this point the customer
is protected by the competition of other merchants and by
that alone.

No, what we have here is a lot of the truth, more of the
truth than anybody expected Gimbels to tell, but not the
whole truth. It is not in the nature of profit-motivated busi-
ness to tell the whole truth. Gimbels is paid by its customers,
but is responsible ultimately, not to its customers, but to its
stockholders. Hence the pressure of the economic determi-
nants is here as always and everywhere toward the exploitation
of the customer up to the tolerance limit of the traffic. Pos-
sibly this tolerance limit is narrowing. I am not sure.

Mr. Collins' demarche is designed to produce customers by
manufacturing a "systematized illusion" to the effect that
business is not business, and that the customer, on entering
Gimbels, can safely put aside and forget the maxim, caveat
emptor, which is the only ultimate protection of the buyer
in a profit-motivated economy.

Suppose that Mr. Collins* readers are convinced; that they
do stop worrying about whether they are being cheated or
not. They would like to do this because it would certainly
mean a great saving of time, money and energy. But what
happens if they do? They find that Gimbels' stock in trade
consists not merely of goods but of "systematized illusions"
built up by decades of advertising and capitalized in trade-
marks which add a considerable percentage to the cost of the
product and a still higher percentage to the price of the
product. In the drug and cosmetics department they would
find that the price of the products offered for sale frequently
represents about 90% of advertising bunk and 10% of mer-
chandize. Will Gimbels, which is pledged to tell the truth, *
the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, tell them that?

No. Does the Industrial By-Products and Research Corpora-
tion know this part of the truth? It either knows it or could
easily learn it. Is this truth of interest and value to the cus-
tomer? It certainly is. Then why doesn't Gimbels buy this
truth from its research company and pass it on to its cus-
tomers? Because Gimbels is a profit-motivated corporation
responsible not to its customers but to its stockholders. Be-
cause the manufacturers of these absurdly priced and inad-
equately described products have by advertising them, built
up systematized illusions to the effect that they are worth
the price asked for them. Because Gimbels, which is not in
business for its health or for the health of its customers, is
obliged both to carry these products, and not tell the truth
about them, or lose an opportunity for making a profit
usually a high profit on their sale. What would happen if
Gimbels started telling the truth about these products? The
manufacturers would probably bring legal or economic pres-
sure to bear, sufficient to cause Gimbels to cease and desist.
Where can you learn the truth about such products? From
Consumers' Research, or for that matter, from almost any
honest testing laboratory you chose to employ. Why does Con-
sumers' Research really tell the truth, the whole truth, and
nothing but the truth, to the best of its ability? Because it is
employed by and responsible to its subscribing members its
customers. Why doesn't Gimbels tell that kind of truth to its
customers? Because it is not responsible to its customers. It is
responsible to its stockholders.

It will perhaps be argued that the drug and cosmetic de-
partment is exceptional. It is somewhat exceptional, but by
no means unique. The breakfast cereal business is also pri-
marily an advertising business, and many of the packaged
"values" offered by Gimbels grocery department are chiefly
air, paper, cellophane and advertising.

It will be further argued that these areas of exploitation,
entrenched in the systematized illusions built up in the pub-

re*

lie mind by advertising, are outside Gimbels' control. But is
Gimbels completely frank about its own "house products"?
If so, Mr. Collins can claim a real revolution. The ordinary
practice of the retailer in substituting a house product for an
advertised product is to take advantage of the inflated illusion
of value built up by advertising. The house product may be,
and frequently is, as good or better than the advertised prod-
uct. The price asked for the house product is ordinarily just
enough less than the price of the advertised product to make
the substitution acceptable to the customer. By crawling un-
der the tent of inflated "values," erected by advertisers, re-
tailers are able to make excellent profit margins through such
substitutions in the case of such a product as face cream,
margins running up to three hundred and four hundred per
cent. Wouldn't it be wonderful, Mr. Collins, if Gimbels made
up a list of such products and undertook to sell them for ap-
proximately reasonable prices? Would this be in line with
the beliefs of the Administration, or would it come under the
head of "destructive price cutting"? In any case, wouldn't it
be nice for the consumer and just possibly good business
for you?

Sadly, one begins to suspect that the able, intelligent, hard-
boiled Mr. Collins has become just another Goose Girl. The
morale of the geese is terrible these days. Mr. Collins is re-
sponsible for a large flock, and as a practical advertising man
he realises that he must do something about it. Hence, with
his left hand, he launches "a great new campaign for truth in
advertising." But his right hand is also busy. Alongside this
pronouncement "Gimbels Tells the Whole Truth," we find
another Gimbel advertisement headed "Sky's the Limit!" In
this advertisement the reflexes of the reader are shrewdly con-
ditioned to the need of and purchase of a collection of beach
chairs, outdoor tables, etc., for use on the roofs of city apart-
ments a new market. This would seem to be very competent
advertising-as-usual in the modern chatty manner, designed to

compete with the interest of the adjoining news columns. It is
currently argued in the trade that this is good "educational"
advertising because it manufactures customers. From the
consumer's point of view it would be possible to contend that
what the consumer is interested in is a concise description of
the product and why it is worth its price; that the chatter,
being neither news nor information, is a tiresome imperti-
nence, intolerable in a civilized community. But then, if the
consumers had that much sense, they would no longer be
geese. So that Mr. Collins' big-hearted services as Goose Girl
and customer producer would no longer be required.

This example and that of the Gillette Safety Razor Com-
pany which is examined in the following chapter, have been
selected because in both cases the claim of truth-telling is ex-
plicitly made. But for the fact that the American pseudo-
culture is based on a structure of make-believe, which, in
turn rests on layer after layer of the accumulated make-be-
lieve of past decades and past centuries, it would not even
be necessary to explode such claims for it would not pay to
make them. Sufficient to say that when an advertiser takes
the name of Truth, it is in the nature of the case that he
should do so in vain, and with either conscious or uncon-
scious hypocrisy; that the coincident appeal to, and exploita-
tion of, reader-confidence is merely one of the necessary
techniques of advertising mendacity-as-usual. The documen-
tation of this mendacity has been sufficiently attended to by
Messrs. Chase and Schlink in 'Your Money's Worth, by
Messrs. Schlink and Kallet in 100,000,000 Guinea Pigs and
by the run of the mill prosecutions by the Federal Trade
Commission, by the seizures of the Food and Drug Adminis-
tration and by the exposures of quack proprietaries by the
American Medical Association.

The conclusion which these massive accumulations of data
add up to in the minds of good citizens in and out of the
advertising business is that the abuses of advertising should

be corrected; that Congress should pass another law; indeed,
as I write this, Congress seems likely to pass another law,
which will be discussed in the concluding chapters of this
book. As a former advertising man, made familiar by years
of practice with the various techniques of the profession, the
naivete of this conclusion leaves me groaning with despond-
ency. Congress can and probably will legislate itself blue in
the face, without changing an iota of the basic economic
and cultural determinants, and so long as these determinants
continue to operate the exploitation of the consumer will
simply, in response to criticism, spin the kaleidoscope of tech-
nical adaptations. To put it more brutally, advertising will
merely find new ways of manufacturing suckers and trim-
ming them. Mendacity is a function of trade and observes no
ethical limits just as military warfare observes no ethical
limits. Advertising is an exploitation of belief. The raw ma-
terial of this traffic is not merely products and services but
human weakness, fear and credulity. In the end, as Veblen
pointed out in the penetrating footnote already quoted, it
becomes a "trading on that range of human infirmities which
flowers in devout observances and fruits in the psychopathic
wards."

To do them justice, the Goose Girls the reformers have
come to constitute almost a sub-profession of the profession
itself are in many cases entirely sincere, since the ideas of a
unified, functional society is something undreamed of in
their philosophies, or in the textbooks of orthodox laissez
faire economists for that matter. Few of them are as logical
or as frank as the banker, Paul M. Mazur, who in his book,
American Prosperity, Its Causes and Consequences, has this
to say about the "Truth in Advertising" ballyhoo:

But should advertising ever limit itself under judicial oath to
tell the whole truth, unvarnished and unadorned, woe betide con-
fidence in America's products and industry. ... If the whole

188

truth were really told, the career of advertising would degenerate
from the impact of a powerful hydraulic hammer to a mildly re-
proving weak slap on the wrist.

So far as the writer is aware, the Better Business Bureau
has never denounced Mr. Mazur for this heresy has never
even given him a "mildly reproving weak slap on the wrist."

189

CHAPTER

10

CHIN MUSIC:

The Truth About the Shavers

SOME time during the decade following the Civil War, and
for reasons unknown, whiskers began to go out in America.
But this fashion mutation ran counter to the conservatism of
nature, according to which whiskers continued to come in.
Thus, by the mysterious power of fashion, a great new in-
dustry was created, giving employment to millions of people,
and carrying the banner of progress to the most remote cor-
ners of the inhabited globe.

It was the period during which the major vested interests
of the American capitalist economy were being parceled out
and consolidated. Railroads, coal, oil. And now, chins. Nude
chins, or rather, the dynamic, progress-generating conflict
between biology and creative myth, expressed in the man-
made taboo on whiskers.

The ground-plan of this industry, as laid down by the
founding fathers, bears the unmistakable mark of genius, com-
bining as it does subtlety and a certain chaste and beautiful
simplicity. The annual wheat harvest is worth so much, in
plus or minus figures mostly minus in recent years. The
daily whisker harvest is worth so much always plus, the
market being certain and the crop utterly reliable and inde-
pendent of the acts of God. Moreover, by an application on
a grandiose scale of the Tom Sawyer theory of business enter-
prise, the harvest hands actually pay for bringing in a crop
which in itself is worth nothing.

190

Nobody knows who started the taboo on whiskers. Not
even a wooden cross marks the unknown grave of this un-
known soldier. But greatness was indisputably his. He changed
the face of the human race. He kept Satan at bay by furnish-
ing work for idle hands to do all male hands, every morn-
ing, three hundred and sixty-five days of the year. He mocked
at natural law. He refashioned the civilized ideal of masculine
beauty. He added uncounted millions to the wealth of this
and other countries, expressed in stock and bond "securities,"
and in deeds and titles to physical properties. The religion
which he founded spread quickly into all lands; it brought
light and leading to the wandering tribes of darkest Africa;
the Igorrotes came down out of their trees and rejoiced in the
new gospel; even the Eskimos within the Arctic Circle ate
less blubber and turned to higher things.

No other religion can claim an equal number of adherents.
Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, Atheism have all
slain their millions. But the Shavers are as the sands of the
sea, and death would be too good for them. It would not be
good business.

Moreover, as contrasted with the faltering faith of these
other decadent sects, the Shavers prove their loyalty by the
punctilious observance of a daily ritual and by regular tithes
contributed to the coffers of the True Church.

As already noted, the founder of this church is unknown.
Quite possibly, he died in poverty and obscurity. But the
Great Apostle of the Shavers was King C. Gillette. He be-
came famous and rich. Quite probably his portrait has been
more widely disseminated than that of any other religious
leader in the history of the world. When he died he left a
large fortune, made out of nothing; made out of "such stuff
as dreams are made on."

The writer is a Shaver and will probably die a Shaver. Why,
he does not know. His father was a Shaver. The only whiskers
in his immediate family environment adorned the chin of his

191

maternal grandfather, who was some special kind of Shouting
Methodist, I believe. At the age of ninety, he was still strok-
ing those whiskers and singing lustily "There is a Green Hill
Far Away." There was also old Maginnis, the Celery King,
but he was a very dirty and eccentric old man, whom the
Shavers used as a Horrible Example.

The myth had been invented some years before I was born,
and during my childhood the taboo on whiskers became in-
creasingly strict. The faces of the young men especially were
vigilantly watched for signs of heresy. Whiskers were derided
as a mark of effeminacy. Even mustaches were considered a
dangerous deviation from the Pure Faith.

On my sixteenth birthday, my father presented me with a
Gillette Safety Razor, and from that day on I observed the
ritual punctiliously, although during the early months the
harvest was meagre. The blades, I noted, were marked, "Not
To Be Re-Sharpened." This I took to be an Article of the
Faith, which I scrupulously obeyed, although it meant that,
since money was scarce, a package of blades had to last at
least a year. The first thirty days were the hardest. After that
the frictional heat generated by repeated scraping was suffi-
cient to cauterize my wounds.

I remember that my grandfather, observing the lamentable
condition of my chin, once urged that I see if his knife hone
wouldn't help those blades a bit. I repelled the suggestion
with scorn. Grandfather and I were in opposite camps. He
was a Shouting Methodist and a bearded ancient. I was an
atheist and a Young Shaver.

The effects of this early religious training still linger. At
various times I have wondered what I would look like in my
natural whiskered state. But what would people say? And
what would happen to my job? And how would my best
girl feel about it? So the next morning I would turn a deaf
ear to those perverse curiosities, and perform again the ritual
of the Gospel According to King C. Gillette.

192

I am reconciled now. Never while I live shall I look in the
mirror and see the image of myself as nature intended me to
be. I am not myself. I am not my own master. I am, like
millions of my fellow men, a Shaver.

I remember that shortly before the war, there was a minor
outcropping of heresy. The Spirit of Doubt was abroad in the
land, and the morals of the young were being sapped by the
insidious infection of a materialist culture. Once I recall see-
ing a young man under thirty, doubtless in a spirit of bravado,
enter a public restaurant looking like the portraits of Alex-
ander Dowie. Quietly but firmly the waiters, with stern, set,
smooth-shaven faces, put him out into the night. Such devil's
disciples were rare, but unquestionably the minds of the
people were troubled. One shrinks from imagining what might
have happened but that, just at the crucial moment, the
President declared war. Force without stint. The Huns were
at the gate. The whiskered Bolsheviks of Russia were attack-
ing the very foundations of civilization.

In the tremendous outpouring of religious faith and de-
votion that followed, all doubts were swept aside. And the
True Church did not fail to do its bit. Sitting in solemn con-
clave in Boston the synod of the Church decreed that not one
American doughboy should lose his immortal soul for lack
of proper equipment to perform the ritual.

I have reason to know that the Church made good on this
patriotic commitment. Along with two million other Shavers
I went, as a private soldier, to France. I knew what I was
fighting for. Those whiskered Bolsheviks, and those bearded
German professors who had signed the manifesto pledging
science and scholarship to the aid of the Huns!

Before I sailed I was presented at various times with eight
separate and complete shaving kits. Three of them were the
official equipment of the True Church; the others were put
out by various dissenting sects which, however, had made
common cause with King C. Gillette in the Great Crusade.

193

Since I regarded these gifts as church property I preserved
them carefully, although the transportation problem was
difficult for a private soldier. My pack had only limited ca-
pacity, and in the aggregate this plethora of equipment added
quite a bit to the load I staggered under on long hikes. With
the best will in the world, I found that they tended to drop
out of the pack, to fall into mess kettles, and otherwise dis-
appear. But I still had six when I sailed.

Before I left the boat I was presented with three more. At
the base hospital the Y.M.C.A. secretary insisted on giving
me another pair. I attempted to protest, but his face froze,
and I took them. This was getting a bit thick I felt. My face
was o.k. I shaved every morning, in cold water at that. What
was I expected to do with those eleven kits? Then a great
idea occurred to me. I would give them away. Besides doing
my bit at the front, I would enlist my services in the Prop-
aganda of the Faith, using the materials with which the Church
had provided me.

I gave one to a bearded priest who was serving as bran-
cardier with a French ambulance section to which my unit
was attached. He would only take one, and I was a little sad-
dened later when I found him, still jolly and hirsute, using
the blade as a nail cutter. Except for one bearded old peas-
ant woman who chased me out of her bistro, I had better
luck, curiously, with the women. I gave six separate shaving
kits to six different marraines, chiefly laundresses and bar-
maids in French villages behind the lines. The women shaved
too, it seemed. Obviously, the war was going better than I
had thought it was.

However, I made no real headway, because more shaving
kits kept coming in, from the Y.M.C.A. and through the
mails from solicitous maiden aunts at home. I broke down
gradually and took to leaving them in the pig pens where we
occasionally lodged, and where, in the nature of things, they
would be of no service to the Cause. Even so, I reflected, I

194

was better off than the mules. The quartermaster's depart-
ment, I was informed, had been supplied with 300,000
branding irons for the mules. I wondered what the mules
would do with them. Provided there were any mules. In six
months at the front I never saw one; nothing but a herd of
Algerian donkeys, once, which rapidly disappeared into the
French soupe. But if there had been mules doubtless they
would have branded themselves thoroughly. The Church, I
reflected, was not alone in its outpouring of patriotic service.
With all this I can testify that the morale of the American
troops was high. We shaved. We shaved almost every day.
We shaved with ditch water. We shaved with luke warm
coffee. After excusable omissions of the ritual, caused by duty
at the front, we shaved twice. For God. For Country. For
King C. Gillette.

What happened after the Armistice was a different matter.
As I look back, it would seem that the whole magnificent
structure of American idealism crumbled almost overnight.

It was a fact, a regrettable fact, but a fact, that the chins
of the American doughboys were pretty sore. They started
wagging. Some of the things they said I hesitate even now to
repeat.

They said they had too damned many shaving kits. They
regretted that the envelopes protecting the blades were not
larger so that the paper might be used for purposes for which
the quartermaster's department provided no regular sup-
plies. They pointed out that whereas every soldier was
equipped with a dozen or so of shaving kits of assorted brands,
none of these kits was equipped with more than one blade.
The Y.M.C.A. gave you razors but no blades. You had to
buy the blades. And the blades were extraordinarily dull. I
remember that one godless doughboy asserted in plain words
that they were made dull on purpose. Nothing happened to
him. In due time he was honorably discharged from the serv-
ice and I met him later in civil life. The doughboys talked a

195

good deal about those blades. Sometimes, in the evenings,
there was enough chin music of this sort to drown out the
regimental band. Always, in such sessions, the name of King
C. Gillette would be intimately and often obscenely coupled
with the Y.M.C.A.

It was probably just shell shock the reaction from the
hardships and dangers of the front. For myself, although a
little disheartened, I could excuse the talk. It was the things
they did. They took to shying shaving kits at truant pigs.
The main street of a French village where we were quartered
became littered with them and the Mayor protested. The
lieutenant ordered out a detail, and a dozen men faced court-
martial rather than move a step. Nothing happened. The
lieutenant, it soon appeared, was growing a beard.

I am a good Shaver still, but naturally I did not go through
this experience unscathed. And in the years that followed
the Armistice I could not help observing that the Church
seemed to be slipping. The phrase "not to be re-sharpened"
was no longer engraved on the blades a doctrinal concession
to modernism for which the official church was to pay
heavily, for innumerable re-sharpening contraptions were
soon on the market and some of them were more or less
effective. Meanwhile, the chin music increased in volume and
shrillness until at last the Church was obliged openly to take
the field against the growing heresy.

In 1926 the Gillette Safety Razor Company spent nearly a
million dollars in newspaper and magazine advertising. The
copy was moderate in tone, attempting to reason the children
back into the fold. The blades had been improved. They were
continually being improved. The mass production process by
which they were produced was incredibly accurate and was
checked by innumerable inspections of the finished product.
The steel used was the best and most expensive tool steel ob-
tainable. True believers should understand, when they ex-
perienced pain and consequent doubt in connection with

performing the daily ritual of the Faith, that it wasn't the
blade's fault. It might be the weather. Or the stiffness of the
communicant's bristles. Or the hardness of the water. Or the
temporary and excusable hardness of the communicant's
heart, induced by a late party the night before.

Reading this campaign I knew in my heart that it marked
the beginning of the end. Not so would old King C. Gillette
have spoken in the great days before that erratic genius sold
out his interests to the bankers, and went gaga as amateur
economist and world -saver. The Church had become rich and
soft. Where the Great Apostle had once peddled his invention
at ten dollars a kit from door to door, the degenerate princes
of the Church now gave the razors away with a tube of shav-
ing cream. True, the empire was now huge, and rich tribute
in the form of profits on blades flowed in from every quar-
ter of the globe. But godless men, actuated by motives of
material gain and without license of the True Church, had
actually ventured to manufacture blades suitable for the of-
ficial razor and offer them for sale in the marts of trade.
And to such a low ebb had the morale of the faithful sunk
that more and more these blades were purchased and used.
So that the prestige of the True Church was shaken and its
tithes reduced.

Again the following year the Church struck out with a
huge advertising campaign. But again the note of authority
was missing from its pronouncements. The blades too, lacked
edge, or at least the chins of the faithful continued wagging
to that effect. This heresy was encouraged by a subversive
organization known as Consumer's Research, which informed
its subscribers that some of the competing blades were per-
haps a little better than the official equipment not much,
but a little. Other insidious rumors went forth; one to the
effect that the Church had even gone so far as to manufac-
ture and sell, under a shameful disguise from which the face
of the Great Apostle had been removed, cheap and inferior

197

blades designed to compete both with the mavericks and with
the official product.

Day after day this subversive chin music gained in volume
and in ominousness. Meanwhile a major crisis approached in
the internal economy of the church. By virtue of the original
patents issued by the State, the gospel according to Gillette
had become an Established Church and the Gillette Com-
pany enjoyed a monopoly in the sale of the patented razor.
This greatly helped in keeping the ritual pure, as also in the
collection of tithes. But within a year these patents would
expire. Chaos, certainly would ensue unless somehow, some-
where, the officialdom of the Church could muster a little
statesmanship.

Long conferences were held, and at last a decision was
reached. The Church would apply for patents on an improved
razor and an improved blade, which latter would fit the old
razor also. But since it would be patented, the conscienceless
mercenaries who already infested the market would be
stopped from imitating it. Meanwhile, the Church would put
forth huge quantities of the new razor, offered to the faithful
free with a tube of shaving cream. In a short space of time
the new razors would displace the old and since they required
the new blades which only the official Church would be en-
titled to make and sell, the elders of the Church would once
more sit at ease in Zion and further diversion of the tithes
would be prevented.

Everything went through as scheduled except those essen-
tial iron clad patents. By some fluke or treachery, just before
the Church's New Deal for the Shavers was announced the
market was flooded with blades which fitted the new razor
perfectly, as well as the old razor. And the State remained
neutral. And the Elders rent their garments. And the Shavers?
It is appalling to realize how little the Shavers cared about
the whole matter except that, finding the heretical blades to
be of reasonably good quality, they bought them in great

quantities. So that the Elders were obliged to seek out the
.heretic, and purchase his business for a large, a very large
sum of money. And a little later, after the stock market
crash, the stockholders of the Church questioned the states-
manship of the elders in fact raised hell. So did a hundred
circumcised and uncircumcised owners of production ma-
chinery that could turn out blades, for countless new brands
appeared on the market.

The later history of the Church is almost too melancholy to
record. Remembering the genius of the Great Apostle, the
Elders sought out one of the most famous Doctors of Adver-
tising Homiletics in America and told him to launch a new
advertising campaign. He did so. He gave the Faithful the old
time religion plus a dash of Listerined Freud. "Am I losing my
husband's love?" (Picture of weeping wife; copy plucks at
the conscience of the husband who is forgetful of the morn-
ing ritual; the cheek you love to touch.)

Too late. It didn't work. So then what did those dumb
elders do? The Truth! The Truth, no less, with the elders
themselves beating their breasts and crying "Mea Culpa."
The truth being a confession that for a while the official
blades were not so good, but now they're much better, please,
and we're honest men and need the money.

The truth, forsooth! Since when has a self-respecting
church felt called upon to defend its divinely inspired truth
against the hecklers of the market place?

The official blades are better now, they say. And they cost
just about half what they formerly cost. I don't care. I am a
Shaver, a devout Shaver, if you like, but after all that has
happened, I can no longer be a faithful churchman. I buy
any old blades. A while back I bought a re-sharpening con-
traption and it worked more or less. And just the other day
I got out grandfather's hone which he specifically bequeathed
to me. It is a good hone. It has been a good hone since 1833.
In fact it does a better job, with less trouble than the con-

199

traption. I suspect that there are by this time thousands like
me. Ours is indeed a faithless generation. And the Church
does so little for us. Beards are coming in again, I suspect.
Some of my best friends are sporting mustaches. And one of
them has a red beard a foot long says it prevents colds.

Well, one man can't be expected to stand alone against
these heresies. And the Church is impotent, or at least silent,
while the evil grows. There is House of David, for example.
And Senator J. Ham Lewis. And Chief Justice Hughes. Old
King C. Gillette would have known how to meet that issue
like a man and a Shaver. But if the Church has ever issued a
bull against Justice Hughes I have no record of it.

Now that the Church has lost its grip, I suppose it's a mat-
ter for the NRA.

A great industry is at stake. The livelihoods of thousands
of workers hang in the balance. Congress ought to pass a law.

200

CHAPTER

11

BEAUTY AND THE AD-MAN

WE HAVE seen that, since advertising is essentially a traffic in
belief, the profession habitually takes the name of Truth,
though usually in vain. But since Beauty is Truth, Truth,
Beauty, the profession is also forever rendering vain oblations
at the shrine of Beauty.

This worship has two major phases. The first is the manu-
facture, by advertising, of successive exploitable concepts of
feminine beauty, of beauty in clothes, houses, furniture,
automobiles, kitchens, everything. The second phase of this
worship has to do with the ad-man's view of his own craft,
and would appear to represent, in part at least, a perversion
of the normal human instinct of workmanship.

From some reason it is thought necessary for the ad-man,
not merely to sell the idea of beauty for profit, but to sell
beauty beautifully. Why? Is there not something excessive
and pathological about advertising's will-to-be-beautiful?

It is contended that an attractively designed advertisement
of an allegedly beautiful toilet seat is more effective than an
ugly advertisement of the same object. But this has never
been proved conclusively. On the contrary, there are many
examples of very ugly advertising which have been excep-
tionally effective. Yet the desire for beauty in advertising is
inextinguishable and has more or less had its way. Fifteen
years ago the well-designed newspaper or magazine adver-
tisement was the exception; today it is the rule. Has the ef-

201

fectiveness of advertising increased proportionately? On the
contrary, it has decreased, and one of the factors in this de-
cline is undoubtedly the increased cost of producing this
economically superfluous beauty in advertising. In any case,
beauty of design or text is only one of the many variable,
more or less unknown and unpredictable factors in the sell-
ing relationship established by the advertisement. And fi-
nally, it would be easy to show that even in 1929, when artists
were often paid $2,000 for a single painting, photographers
$500 for a single print and typographers equally fancy prices
even in the heyday of art-in-advertising, cheap and ugly
advertisements frequently sold goods just as well or better.
And today, what could be uglier than the inane, story-in-
pictures advertisements which sell Lux, Fleischmann's Yeast,
Lifebuoy Soap, and other products with demonstrated ef-
fectiveness?

There is, of course, a recognized and demonstrated com-
mercial justification for using expensive "art" and expensive
typography in the advertising of certain luxury products
such as perfumes, de luxe motor cars and the like. The prin-
ciple is that of "conspicuous waste," used to create an am-
bience, a prestige for the product, which will lift it above
the rational level of pride competition. The familiar snob
appeal, applied to such prosaic commodities as fifteen-cent
cigarettes and twenty-five-cent collars, also accounts for a
good deal of conspicuous expenditure in advertising "art,"
and up to a certain point, this is commercially justifiable. Yet
it remains true, as many hard-boiled professionals have pointed
out, that beauty has been permitted to run hog-wild in con-
temporary advertising practice. Carroll Rheinstrom, Adver-
tising Manager of Liberty, was recently quoted in Advertis-
ing and Selling as believing that 90% of current advertising
is waste because of the ad-man's pre-occupation with his own
techniques, to the exclusion of practical economic considera-
tions.

202

No, the logical economic explanations don't make sense.
Advertising today, while anything but efficient, is far bet-
ter designed and written than it needs to be; obviously it
costs far, far more to produce than it ought to cost. Part
of the explanation, I think, lies in a private impurity of the
advertising craftsman; he is more interested in beauty than
he is in selling. For him the advertisement is a thing-in-itself .
Highly developed craftsmanship in the graphic arts and in
writing, enormous expenditures of mechanical skill, are de-
posited at the shrine not of Mammon but of Beauty. And all
pretty much in vain. The art isn't really art. The writing
isn't really writing. And frequently the worst "art" and the
worst "writing" sell products better than the best art and
the best writing.

Yes, the explanation of this curious phenomenon may well
be that advertising, since it doesn't make sense in economic,
social or human terms, jumps right through the Looking-
Glass and becomes a thing-in-itself!

It takes a nai've eye to see this. I had to have it pointed out
to me by a poet friend who makes his living writing prose
for a very expensive magazine. He picked up a copy of the
publication and pointed to a Camel cigarette advertisement
in color. How much did that cost, he asked? I estimated rap-
idly: $ 1,000 for the drawing, add $200 for the time of the
art director and an assistant, $400 for the color plates, $100
for typography, $100 more for miscellaneous mechanical
charges, $100 for copy, $300 pro-rated for executive and
management charges. Total for one advertisement, not count-
ing the cost of the space, about $2,300.

"Well," commented my poet friend, "that's the end-result,
isn't it? That's why Kentucky planters go bankrupt growing
tobacco, why negro and white share croppers sweat, starve
and revolt, why millions of men and women diligently smoke
billions of cigarettes all so that this magnificent advertise-
ment might be born and live its little hour."

203

My friend was treating himself to a little poetic license, of
course. But the more I stared at the phenomenon, the more I
became convinced that it made just as much sense upside
down as right side up. And the more I reflected upon the
role of the "creative worker" in advertising, the more I came
to suspect skullduggery of an obscure, unconscious sort. Os-
tensibly these craftsmen are employed to write words and
draw lines that will persuade their fellow man to buy certain
branded cigarettes, soaps, toothpastes, gadgets, etc. But do
these fellows really give a whoop about these gadgets and
gargles or whether people buy them or not? Did I, when I
was a member in good standing of the profession?

Never a whoop nor a whisper. What I cared about was my
craft, and that is what every genuine craftsman cares about
that and nothing else. Each piece of copy was a thing-in-
itself. I did a workmanlike job, not for dear old Heinz, or
Himmelschlussel, or Rockefeller, or whomsoever I was serv-
ing indirectly, but for myself; because it was pleasant to do
a competent job and unpleasant to do a slovenly job. I was
aware, of course, that Mr. Rockefeller, via the agency, was
paying me, and I tried not to get fired. But I never worried
about my duty to Mr. Rockefeller and to his oils and gad-
gets. The prospect, the customer? I was a bit sorry for the
customer, and tried to let him off with as little bamboozle-
ment as possible. But my real loyalty was to the Word, to
the materials of my craft. Loyalty to the Word writing a
competent advertisement sometimes meant being pretty
rough and mendacious with the customer. I couldn't help
that. I was carried away by the fury of composition, just as
a good Turkish swordsman becomes carried away in his pro-
fessional dealings with the Armenians.

But chiefly, I think, my indomitable instinct of workman-
ship was hard on my employer. Unconsciously I sabotaged
his interests continuously. I wrote clean, lucid prose, when
the illiterate screed that the advertiser wanted to print would

204

probably have sold more goods. When my immediate su-
perior plaintively objected that what I wrote was too good
for the audience to which it was addressed, I was indignant
and recalcitrant. Ordered to rewrite the advertisement, I
seized the opportunity to bring it closer to my standard of
craftsmanship, which had nothing to do with commerce. If
the client objected, I bullied him if possible, and otherwise
made a minimum of grudging concessions.

A percentage of the copy writers in advertising agencies
are craftsmen. I have known scores of them. They felt as I
felt, and consciously or unconsciously, they did what I did.
The artists were even more obsessed and obstreperous. As I
knew them, their disinterestedness in the profits of Mr. Rocke-
feller was extreme. They were interested in drawing pretty
pictures. They drew them as well as they could, regardless of
whom and of what? Regardless of the advertiser and what
he had asked them to draw. Naturally, the picture had to
convey a sales message, and they chattered a great deal about
"putting a selling punch" into their pictures. But I noticed
that the best of them became so interested in the design
and the drawing that they frequently left no room for
the copy or even for the trade-mark of the manufacturer.
(This last I suspect was a trick of the Freudian unconscious;
the trade-mark was resented because it was the signature of
the advertiser.) When account executives and advertisers re-
pined at such extravagant oblations at the shrine of Beauty,
the artists were haughtier even than the copy writers. And
since the average American business man has a puzzled and
diffident reverence for art, coupled with an enormous igno-
rance of the nature of artists, their motivations and tech-
niques, these so-called "commercial" artists did then and still
do get away with an astonishing amount of sheer mayhem and
murder. The writers, too, though to a less degree, because most
advertisers can read and write. The technique is less strange
and the technician correspondingly less formidable. All ac-

205

count executives in agencies, and worse still, all advertisers,
have an obscene itch to write themselves. Consequently the
copy writer must sternly and vigilantly keep these vulgarians
in their places. I always considered it to be my duty to stand
on my dignity as a "genius" the word still goes big in the
world of commerce, especially on the West Coast and epater
these bourgeois, partly as a matter of self-respect, and partly
as a practical measure of professional and personal aggrandize-
ment.

Commercial artists and writers indeed! Art for art's sake
was our motto, and to hell with the advertiser. I can remem-
ber not one, but half a dozen times when an advertisement
was written, illustrated, set up in exquisite type, and de-
posited in proof form on the account executive's desk almost
ninety-nine and three-quarters per cent pure. True, the text
had more or less to do with the product which we were sup-
posed to be advertising, but the advertiser's "message" was
merely a point of departure for the copy writer's lovingly
executed exercise in pure design, and the typography was a
study in black on white which made no concessions whatever
to readability. The advertiser's trade-mark and signature were
either carefully concealed or left out entirely. Usually, of
course, these pure triumphs, these pious oblations at the shrine
of Beauty, caused the account executive to yell bloody mur-
der. He was right and we knew he was right. We had gone
too far. We would therefore execute a careful retreat from
such tactical excesses, grumbling dourly for the sake of the
record that the account executive was obviously an ignoramus,
and that his precious client was a misbegotten idiot whom we
would like to kill and stuff with his own Cheery Oats, or
whatever it was he sold; that, however, as loyal employees of
dear old Kidder, Bidder & Bunkstein we would gladly give
him what he wanted and hoped it choked him.

We never did, of course, for that would have been to con-
cede too much. So that the client was kept in a constant,

206

salutary state of baffled rage, alarm and hope; and every now
and then an unhappy account executive would have a
nervous breakdown. We never had nervous breakdowns.

Does this seem exaggerated? But how can the honest chron-
icler record fantasy except in the terms of fantasy? And the
vast accumulation of advertising during the post-war decade
was fantastic in the extreme. It is still fantastic. Look at it
in the pages of any commercial magazine. Does it make
sense in terms of the sober, profit -motivated business that
advertising is supposed to be? Recently the investigators of
the Psychological Corporation discovered that the variation
as between advertisements of lowest and highest effectiveness
runs as high as 1,000 per cent. An automobile assembly line
is considered poor if it permits a quality variation of more
than 30 per cent. Is it sensible to believe that a production
technique which frequently shows 3,000 per cent variation
in the quality of the product is really aimed at its avowed
objective, namely the sale of products and services to cus-
tomers? Well, if I were out duck shooting and missed my
duck by i ,000 per cent, I should consider it open to question
whether or not I was really trying to hit that duck.

No. To understand this phenomenon we must employ a
far subtler analysis, giving all the factors their due weight,
no matter how fantastic these factors are, and no matter how
seemingly irrational the conclusion to which we are led.

Again, Veblen furnishes us with the essential clue. In the
Theory of Business Enterprise and elsewhere in the whole
body of his work, Veblen notes that advertising is one element
of the "conscientious sabotage" by which business keeps the
endlessly procreative force of science-in-industry from break-
ing the chains of the profit system. In this view the business
man figures as an art-for-art's-saker. His art is the making
of money, which has nothing to do with the use of the pro-
ductive forces by which a society gains its livelihood. The art
of making money is perhaps the purest, the most irrational

207

art we know, and its practitioners are utterly intransigent.
Today these artists in money making are prepared to starve
millions of people, to plunge the planet in war, to destroy
civilization itself rather than compromise the purity of their
art.

Veblen saw all this clearly, and Stuart Chase has employed
the Veblenian apposition of business and industry in a se-
quence of useful books. But one might well go further and
assert that the contradictions of capitalism persist even within
the mental gears and pistons of its exploitative functionaries.

Business sabotages industry by means of advertising. True.
But we, as advertising craftsmen, consciously or unconsciously
motivated not by a desire to make money but by an obsessed
delight in the materials of our craft we in turn sabotaged
advertising. We were and are parasites and unconscious sabo-
teurs. During the whole postwar decade we gathered strength,
inflated our prestige, consolidated our power. More and more
the "creative worker" became the dominant force in agency
practice, and advertising consequently became more and more
"pure." The shrine of Beauty was buried under the fruits and
flowers placed there by devout artists and writers in adver-
tising. We were no humble starvelings. We caused the salaries
and fees paid advertising artists and artists to become no-
torious. Even I, who was always more or less aware of what
I was doing, and who was indifferent to money for its own
sake even I, without particularly trying, because I never
could keep more than a fraction of my mind concentrated
on the absurd business, managed to triple my salary dur-
ing the postwar decade. Agency production costs hit the ceil-
ing, broke through and sailed off into the empyrean. We
developed an esthetic of advertising art and copy, a philosophy,
a variety of equally fantastic creeds a whole rich literature
of rationalization which should interest the psychiatrists
greatly if they ever get around to examining it.

I say "we" with poetic license. I speak for the profession,

208

but I speak out of turn, and I shall doubtless be roundly
repudiated and contemned by the menagerie of Cheshire
Cats, March Hares, Mad Hatters and Red Queens who still
roam the scant pastures on the other side, the right side of
the Advertising Looking-Glass. As a matter of fact I con-
tributed nothing to this literature of rationalization. I was
too busy making a living, trying to keep sane and do a little
serious work on the side, and wondering just how soon that
beautiful iridescent bubble would break, leaving us "creative
workers" with nothing much in our hands and a lot of soap
in our eyes.

It broke. Came Black Thursday, and a chill wind blew
through the advertising rookeries of the Grand Central Dis-
trict. Advertising appropriations were cut. That exquisite
First Article of the Ad-Man's Credo: "When business is good
it pays to advertise; when business is bad you've got to ad-
vertise," was invoked with less and less effect. As the months
and years passed the whole structure of the industry began to
sideslip and sway. And advertising became less pure. That
beautiful, haughty odalisque had to hustle down into the
market place and drag in the customers. She had to speak of
price. She became dowdy and blatant and vulgar. The primi-
tive techniques of Hogarth in the eighteenth cenlury were
resurrected via the tabloids, and the moronic sales talk issued
in ugly balloons from the mouths of ugly moronic figures.
Photography was cheaper than drawings and worked as well
or better. Testimonials were cheap and worked best of all.

Desperately, advertising began to step out of its part and
tell the truth a little. The customer got an occasional break.
But advertising lost her name, the poor girl. And it got worse.
Every time car loadings hit a new low, another big advertiser
would go buckeye with testimonials and other loathsome
practices, and she would lose her name again. Alarmed, the
reformers of advertising started another vice crusade, and
their activities will be described elsewhere. They haven't ac-

209

complished much, despite General Johnson's benediction pro-
nounced on the "good" advertising that will be needed more
and more under the New Deal. Their voices become ever
fainter and more faint.

Quite evidently the religion of Beauty-in-Advertising has
entered upon a period of decadence. The advertisers, being
only one jump ahead of the sheriff, or more often two jumps
behind, are obliged to cut each other's throats without bene-
fit of Beauty. In fact many of them, having learned wisdom
from the tabloids, are openly blasphemous and vengeful with
respect to the art-for-art's-sakers. Pursued by their unfor-
giving maledictions, the Priests of Beauty have fled to Majorca
or Vermont, where they nurse their wounds and wait. Not
all of them, however. In 1932 and 1933, a few stalwarts at-
tempted a counter-offensive against the sansculottes who had
laid waste the pleasant fields of advertising. The more or
less recognized leader of this gallant Lacedemonian band is
Mr. Rene Clarke, President of the firm of Calkins & Holden,
Inc., one of the oldest, most ethical, and most respected adver-
tising agencies in America. Mr. Clarke is a genuinely gifted
designer whose worship of Beauty is without flaw or com-
promise. Among his many triumphs is that of so glorifying
Wesson Oil that millions of American housewives consume
tons of it, under the impression, doubtless, that it is a kind of
champagne.

When the evil days came, Mr. Clarke had no pleasure in
them, and no sympathy for the panic-stricken advertisers
who with more or less success were trying to lift them-
selves out of the spreading sea of red ink by the balloon tech-
nique borrowed from the tabloids. Hence, after the slaughter
of the morons had proceeded without benefit of Beauty for
three depression years, Mr. Clarke, in 1932, published in
Advertising and Selling the pronunciamento which is here
quoted in full:

210

Challenge

Bring me Idealism: I'm tired of things that look like things as
they are. Have you buried your hearts like pots of gold in the
earth? You who are entrusted with the responsibility of showing
others what they cannot see for themselves. If your eyes see only
what is seen by others, from where will the vision come? You who
have been so disdainful of the ordinary, will you stand aside now
and let the ordinary lead you back to the paths that stretch up to
the heights?

You claimed to be the leaders, the gifted, sensitive few, who dis-
cerned and brought into being the beauty that is truth. The quality
of leadership is tested by adversity. Because we have adversity, do
you renounce your leadership and hoard your visions against that
time when some one else has made a market for your talent?

Is your sense of beauty so delicate that it cannot be exposed to
the frost? Will you come out again like house flies at the first
warm touch of prosperity's spring?

Bring me Courage: I'm tired of conformity that hides behind
the general use. It is indeed a low level that parallels the taste of
the throng. If we all conform, wherein will the crowd find guid-
ance away from the common level? You say it narrows your mar-
ket. Nothing of worth has been created with one eye on one's
market. One needs both eyes and yet more to see into one's heart,
and it is from there that truth is born.

Courage walks alone, even in the market places. The crowd must
follow where the trail is blazed. Look at your idols. Did they hesi-
tate because no one had been that way before? Did they wait for
acceptance before they advertised their principles?

Bring me Imagination: I'm tired of today and want to see to-
morrow.

I need an image, not of what I am, but of what I hope to be. Put
away the mirror; set up the telescope. Was it not yesterday you
boasted that your souls had wings, that you could penetrate rare
atmospheres where the rest of us could not exist? Fly now, and
bring us down a measure of that ozone.

Bring us back from those excursions of the mind, which are the
responsibility of your guild, a portion of wine to wash down our

211

dry daily fare wine from the vineyards of romance and imagina-
tion.

If you bring us only bread, you become mere housewives serving
the needs of the body, and we recede step by step from that
estate which breeds the very license of your occupation.

Have you no contacts with the gods that you only recite the
conversations of the world? What binds you to this circling round
and round? Can you not stretch your tether ever so little that the
next circle would be trod on untrampled ground?

Do you listen to those who counsel return to something which
we had but have lost. That is the creed of those who lack imagina-
tion or courage and the refuge of those without plan. What we had
we have not now. It belongs to yesterday, not today nor tomorrow.
Others may lean on and borrow from the past, but you may not.
Yours is the responsibility to create the new, the fresh, the vital
vision of tomorrow, what we hope to be.

Obviously Mr. Clarke has gone dada, and I trust no person
in this audience will be so ungracious as to ask what he is
talking about. In the old days, when, in the heat of copy and
art conferences, advertisers voiced such impertinent ques-
tions, we always boxed their ears and told them to mind
their own business, if any. Often there was little enough by
the time we got through with them.

I regard Mr. Clarke's manifesto as a classic of its kind, and
not without its historic interest; for Mr. Clarke himself is
perhaps the last of the art-for-art's-sakers in advertising.
His manifesto is illustrated by a most artistic photographic
study of the artist himself, standing with one hand resting on
his hip, the other hand lifted and placed upon a pillar of
the temple of advertising, the clear, unsubdued eyes gazing
into the distance. The pose is suggestive, even ominous. What
does this Samson of Art-in-Advertising mean to do? Shorn
of his prestige, will he gird his loins once more, and bring the
whole temple roaring down upon the heads of the Philis-
tines? It would be a fitting end.

212

Let us turn now to a consideration of the primary phase
of the Ad-Man's worship of Beauty: the manufacture by
advertising of successive exploitable concepts of feminine
beauty, of beauty in clothes, houses, furniture, automobiles,
kitchens, everything. One notes three major points: first, that
these concepts must be as rapidly obsolescent as possible; sec-
ond, that the connotation of beauty with expensiveness is
rigorously enforced; third, that beauty is conceived of as
functional with respect to profitable sales, rather than with
respect to satisfying beautifully and economically the living
and working needs of the population.

Most exploitation of the idea of beauty reduces in practi-
cal terms to a promotion of sales and profits through the
fostering of obsolescence. This is most apparent in the field of
women's fashions. Here the exploitative apparatus includes
not only advertising in the narrow sense of the word, but
also the editorial propaganda of the style magazines, plus a
more or less collusive hook-up with the rotogravure supple-
ments of the newspapers, with stage and motion picture
actresses, and with Junior League debutantes. This complex
promotion apparatus is utilized to achieve, first, the funda-
mentally false identification of beauty and fashion. The ac-
celeration of fashion changes during the postwar period is an
index of the textile industry's rapid emergence into the "sur-
plus economy" phase of capitalism, with its entailed crisis.
The life-span of a successful style was roughly about a year
in 1920. Today, according to the testimony of well-known
stylists, this life-span has dropped to less than six months.
The mortality of the candidates for fashion's favor has corre-
spondingly increased.

Winifred Raushenbush, in an article in the New Freeman,
described the dilemma of the dress manufacturer who knows
that nine out of every ten designs are doomed to "take a
bath," to use the trade jargon. This mortality is about
equally high throughout the fashion industry, whether in hats,

dresses or cloaks, and whether the manufacturer is serving
the high, medium or low style markets. Snobbism is, of
course, the major instrument of the promotion technique.
The exquisite hauteur with which both the advertisers in
Vogue and the editor of Vogue lecture their nouveaux riche
readers is matched only by the slightly burlesqued imitation
of this manner to which indigent stenographers are subjected
when they look for bargains on Fourteenth Street. The dif-
fusion of a fashion change, both as to geography, and as be-
tween the high, medium and low style levels has become
almost instantaneous. Emulative pressures are invoked all
down the line. Women dress today not merely for men, but
for women as a form of social competition. So potent is the
style-terror that even during the depression the majority of
women would rather starve than risk the shame of non-
conformity. They save and scrimp, skip lunches, buy the
latest mode, and four months later are obliged to buy again
this time an "ensemble," so that the manufacturers of hand-
bags and even cosmetics may also share in the profits of style-
obsolescence.

Deterioration of function fostered by advertising is espe-
cially conspicuous in the field of fashion. Even in expensive
high-style apparel, the materials tend increasingly to be
shoddy. And the crowning joke is that for about fifty per
cent of American women, the dress, cloak and hat manufac-
turers do not produce, do not even attempt to produce,
clothes which have any relation to the physical type of the
women who are asked to buy them! This, at least, is the
testimony of Miss Raushenbush in another New Freeman
article entitled "15,000,000 Women Can't go Nude." They
don't go nude, of course. They accept the ruthless prescrip-
tion of the current fashion, which is usually appropriate for
the young flapper type. It looks and fits like the devil on the
mature woman, the short woman, the tall woman, the "hippy"
woman. There are at least five major feminine types of these

214

.

"forgotten women" the existence of whom the fashion indus-
try has barely deigned to notice, let alone serve adequately.

In recent years the attempt has been made to extend the
sway of fashion, /. e., profit-motivated obsolescence, into
every conceivable field of human purchase and use. Invariably
this fashion offensive wears the masque of beauty. Almost
invariably, the net result is to increase the tonnage of shoddy
make-believe. One must say this at the same time that one
acknowledges in fairness that the industrial designers who
have both promoted and profited by this offensive, have tried
to introduce some slight measure of the substance and func-
tion of beauty, and in some cases have measurably succeeded.

The motivation of this crusade is acknowledged in the
title of an article contributed by Earnest Elmo Calkins to
Advertising and Selling: "The Dividends of Beauty." One
readily acknowledges that nothing, whether beautiful or
ugly, can be made under a profit system unless it does pay
dividends. The point is that under a profit system both the
guiding esthetic and its expression by a profit -motivated in-
dustry are severely limited and distorted, so that the net
product of beauty is likely to be meagre indeed. Says Mr.
Calkins:

The place of art in industry is becoming firmly established. A
restaurant arranges common vegetables in patterns in its windows,
taking full advantage of the different greens of peas, asparagus,
cauliflower and artichoke, and adds eye-appeal to appetite appeal.
A railroad landscapes its stations with grass plots and climbing roses
and transforms an unsightly utility into an attractive eye-catcher,
builds local goodwill, adds an esthetic touch to mere ordinary
travel, and creates a new sales argument.

Much has been accomplished in this new field, but the list is long
of manufactured articles waiting for that beautifying touch which
costs but little and adds so much to acceptance. The initial shape
and color of most machine-made articles are ugly. Why, I don't
know. Nature does not err that way. All her products are artistic

215

and harmonious with each other. Some appeal to several senses. An
ear of corn is pleasant to sight and touch. . . . Nothing but man
with his filling stations, hot-dog stands and automobile cemeteries
strikes a discordant note. ... A forest grows unhelped and is for-
ever beautiful. A town grows as it will and looks like hell hit with
a club. Beauty in man-made articles must be the result of conscious
thinking. . . .

Mr. Calkins, a veteran of the advertising profession, admits
that he doesn't know why most machine-made articles are
ugly. By and large, the writer must admit a similar ignorance.
The glib radical answer would run to the effect that it is not
the machine, but the application of machine technology to the
making of profits that results in this ugliness. But this answer
doesn't cover all the facts by any means. Some machine-made
articles, even some machine-made consumer's goods, made for
profit and sold at Woolworth's, are beautiful. Many hand-
made articles are ugly Elbert Hubbard's de luxe editions for
example, and much of the present flood of sweatshop toys,
china, etc., coming out of Japan and Germany; also the neo-
Mayan design in pottery and textiles which results when the
primitive social-economic pattern of a Mexican village is shat-
tered and the native craftsmen are Taylorized by a capitalist
entrepreneur. Yet the burial urns and other art objects turned
out in quantity during some of the best Chinese periods,
trade-marked, and exported for profit to Persia, were and are
extremely beautiful. Production for use does not necessarily
result in beauty, nor does production for profit necessarily
result in ugliness. Estheticians and sociologists have striven
vainly to discover the rationale of beauty in the social con-
text of production, sale and use. The best that the writer can
offer is a tentative observation to the effect that the Ameri-
can genius, operating under the conditions of modern indus-
trial capitalism burns brightest, and gives the largest product
of beauty in the field of producer's goods : the machines them-

216

selves, turbines, electric cranes, modern factory architecture
and the product of these factories for strict use seen in
bridges, viaducts, etc. On the other hand the American blind
spot is in the field of economic and social organization;
hence we are likely to find that a machine product, designed
for sale to the ultimate consumer usually, though not always
betrays the disorder, the insanity, the ugliness of our decadent
capitalist economy and our chaotic distributive system. In
general I think it may be said that where the salesman and
advertiser, rather than the craftsman and producer, are in
the saddle, what the consumer gets is likely to be ugliness. In
a fragmented civilization such as ours, art and the artist tend
to be tossed off to the periphery of a system which no longer
is organic. Mr. Calkins would like to bring the artist back to
the center of the system, where, as industrial designer, he
can contribute "that beautifying which costs but little and
adds so much to acceptance." The attempt is in fact being
made on a considerable scale, but without much success, and
for very good reasons.

A very good industrial designer there are a number of
highly talented Americans at work in this field can control
some but not all of the factors which determine whether a
product is to be beautiful or ugly. He can't control the profit-
motive and that is precisely where he falls down. As a matter
of fact, who is it calls in the industrial designer? The adver-
tising agency, usually, or the sales manager of the manu-
facturer. Why do they call him in? To make the product a
beautiful object? Incidentally, perhaps, but primarily to make
the product a salable object. The designer hence must work
not as an artist, but as a showman, a salesman. If he were
working as an artist, he would make the form of the object
express the truth of its function, not merely in mechanical
but also in economic and social terms, and it would be beauti-
ful. But his is perforce a one-dimensional art. Working as he
must, as a showman, he usually gives the object a novel flip

of line or color he "styles" it in terms of the showman, not
of the artist. As a designer he finds himself frustrated and
stultified by the false and anti-social production relationships
which condition his labor. The same thing is true, of course,
of the engineer, the educator, the doctor, the architect, in-
deed of all creative workers in an acquisitive society. Recently
one of the best known and most highly paid industrial de-
signers in America came to me and asked what chance he
would have of doing serious work in Russia. He was fed up
with the rootless frivolities that sales managers had asked him
to turn out.

It is in the field of package design that the artist has great-
est freedom and has scored his maximum of seeming successes.
It is true that simple, bold lettering, clear colors and good
design produce more sightly packages and that customers are
attracted by such packages. It is also true that these packages
are likely to contain the same overpriced, overadvertised and
sub-standard content that they always held. This package
"beauty" is therefore skin deep, and its creation the proper
concern of business men and commercial dilettantes, not of
artists who have any conception of the social function of art.
If these packageers had any such conception they would prob-
ably feel obliged to ask first, in three cases out of five, whether
the product really ought to be packaged at all.

It occurs to me that in discussing the role of the craftsman
in advertising I may have given the impression that his "con-
scientious sabotage," his interest in the materials of the craft
rather than in selling, his attempts to convert advertising into
a thing-in-itself, represent a genuine release of creative ca-
pacity. No such impression was intended. If any genuine
creation goes on in advertising agencies I have never seen it. I
have seen the sort of thing described: the crippled, grotesque,
make-believe of more or less competent craftsmen who played
with the materials of their craft but could never use them
systematically for any creative purpose. By and large there is

218

no such thing as art in advertising any more than there is
such a thing as an advertising literature.

The best of us, certainly, had more sense than to make any
such pretensions. I suppose that in some twelve years of
advertising practice I must have written some millions of
words of what is called "advertising copy," much of it for
very eminent and respectable advertisers. It was all anony-
mous, thank heaven, and I shall never claim a line of it. True,
half-true and false, the advertiser signed it, the newspapers
and magazines printed it, the radio announcer blatted it, and
the wind has blown it away. It was all quite without any
human dignity or meaning, let alone beauty, and it cannot
be too soon forgotten.

No, we knew what we were. On the door of the art de-
partment of an agency where I worked, a friend of mine, one
of the ablest and most prolific commercial artists in the busi-
ness, once tacked a sign. It read: "Fetid Hell-Hole of Lost
Souls."

There are many hundreds of these "fetid hell-holes" in the
major cities of America. The inmates are, of course, dedicated
to beauty, beauty in advertising. Whether they knew it or not
they are, as artists, so many squeaking, tortured eunuchs. The
Sultans of business pay them well or not so well. They have
made sure that they do not fertilize the body of the culture
with the dangerous seed of art.

2F9

CHAPTER

12

SACRED AND PROFANE LOVE

IN TRACING the pattern of the ad -man's pseudoculture,
we come next to the concept of love, which figures as an
ingredient in most of the coercions of fear and emulation by
which the ad-man's rule is administered and enforced. The
theory and practice of this rule are clearly indicated in the
title of a comparatively recent advertising text book by Mr.
Kenneth M. Goode: Haw to Turn People into Gold. As a prac-
ticing alchemist in his own right and also as an agent of that
purest of art-for-art's-sake gold-diggers, the business man,
the ad-man treats love pragmatically, using every device to
extract pecuniary gain from the love dilemmas of the popula-
tion. The raw ore of human need, desire and dream is carefully
washed and filtered to eliminate all impurities of intelligence,
will and self-respect, so that a deposit of pure gold may be
precipitated into the pockets of the advertiser.

The enterprise of turning people, with their normal sexual
desires and human affections, into gold, is greatly helped by
the fact that our Puritan cultural heritage is peculiarly rich
in the psychopathology of sex. This social condition is in
itself highly exploitable, but it is not enough. The ad-man
is in duty bound not merely to exploit the mores as he finds
them, but further to pervert and debauch the emotional life
of our literate masses and classes. He must not merely sell
love-customers; he must also create love-customers, for, as

220

we have seen, the advertising profession is nothing if not
creative.

The dominance of the love appeal in contemporary adver-
tising must be apparent to every reader of our mass and
class magazines, as well as to the Great Radio Audience.
Curiously enough, it would appear that the so-called "higher"
manifestations of sex its moral, ethical, spiritual and roman-
tic derivatives and sublimations, the domestic affections and
loyalties of husbands and wives, and of parents and children,
are more exploitable than the grosser sexual appetites. Love
rules the world, and the greatest triumph of modern adver-
tising is the discovery that people may be induced to turn
themselves into gold simply by a forthright appeal to their
better natures, as a kind of public duty, since it is recognized
in all civilized communities that gold is more beautiful and
more valuable than people. Today, therefore, many of our
most successful advertisers stand, like John P. Wintergreen
in "Of Thee I Sing," squarely upon the broad platform of
Love, and when their campaigns are conducted with proper
vigor, skill and enthusiasm, their election is almost automatic,
as in the Third Reich. This, at least, is the contention of many
eminent members of the advertising profession.

The distinction between sacred and profane love is difficult
to maintain, and is in fact frequently blurred in current ad-
vertising practice. For convenience in examining the evidence,
perhaps the following categories will serve:

Sacred Love. The affections and loyalties of husbands and
wives. Maternal, paternal and filial affections. Religious and
charitable impulses. Respect for the dead. Idealism in roman-
tic love, this being closely related to the concepts of chastity
and beauty.

Profane Love. The physical intimacies of adolescents, such
as kissing, petting, etc. The problem created by sexual desire
on the part of both the married and the unmarried, as com-
plicated by the desire not to have children.

221

Illustrative material in both categories is so abundant that
the specimens cited in this exposition will necessarily fail to
include many of the most distinguished achievements of con-
temporary advertising. No slight is intended, and any reader
who wishes to do so can easily correct the balance by a brief
survey of the advertising pages of current mass and class
magazines.

The sanctity of marriage is a major item in the Christian
idealism of love. I quote at this point an advertisement by the
Cadillac Motor Company which exploits this idealism with all
the resources of modern advertising technique:

I DO

It may have been but a decade ago ... or it may have been in
the beautiful 90*5 . . . but sometime, somewhere, a young man
stood in the soft light of a Junetime morning . . . and repeated the
words ... "I do." . . . Since that time he has fought, without
interruption, for the place in the world he wants his family to
occupy. . . . And it may be that, out of the struggle, he has lost a
bit of the sentiment that used to abide in his heart . . . for success
is a jealous master and exacts great servitude. . . . But not when
the Junetime comes . . . and, with it, that anniversary of another
June! . . . Then the work-a-day world, with its many tasks, is
cast abruptly aside, and sentiment pure and simple rules in his
heart once more. . . . And, because there are literally thousands of
him, doorbells are ringing this June throughout America . . . and
smiling boys in uniform stand, hats in hand, with the proof of
remembrance. . . . And along with the beautiful flowers, and the
boxes of candy, and the other tokens . . . some of those brides of
other Junes will receive the titles to new Cadillacs . . . and for
them there will be no other June like this save one alone. . . .
There is a Cadillac dealer in your community long practiced in
the art of keeping a secret. . . . Why not go see him today? You
can trust him not to tell!

222

Note the exquisite, hesitant style. The copy writer knows
he is treading on sacred ground. Do not blame him for using
the "three dots" device invented by that fleshly Broadway
columnist, Walter Winchell. Rather, one should admire the
catholicity of spirit by which profane techniques are con-
verted to sacred uses. Note that this tender message to fond
husbands, written not without awareness of its effect upon
wives, focuses upon the proof that he has remembered his
marriage anniversary. Ladies, by their works ye shall know
them. The more costly the proof the more profound the sen-
timent. On that remembered June she got a husband. This
June she gets a Cadillac. Clearly the one was a means to the
other. Note too that only some wives will get Cadillacs,
precious both in themselves and as emulative symbols in the
endless race to keep up with the Joneses.

In the original advertisement the photograph of orange
blossoms was reproduced in color. Beauty, sentiment, tact,
effrontery by means of these reagents the advertising al-
chemist converts the pure and beautiful devotion of husbands
into something still more pure. Gold. Pure gold.

Advertisers believe enormously in children. They have lav-
ished immense sums upon the education of parents in matters
of infant care and feeding, the prevention of disease, etc.
Much of that education is sound enough, much of it is irre-
sponsible and misleading, and all of it, of course, is anything
but gratuitous. I have before me an advertisement of Cream
of Wheat which shows the familiar scare technique used in
exploiting parental devotion. The headline, "At the Foot of
My Baby's Crib I Made a SOLEMN PROMISE" is melodra-
matic even as to typography. What's it all about? The baby
in the fable was shifted from milk to solid food not Cream
of Wheat and got sick. The doctor, who judging from his
photograph might well be a retired confidence man, tells
the parents to feed the baby Cream of Wheat. The inference
is that if he'd been fed Cream of Wheat from the beginning,

223

he wouldn't have become sick, which is itself an impudent
enough non sequitur. Add the fact that semolina, a non-
trade-marked wheat product used by macaroni manufactur-
ers, is in the writer's experience of baby-feeding, an entirely
satisfactory equivalent for Cream of Wheat costing about a
third as much, and you get a measure of the advertiser's
effrontery. Compute Cream of Wheat's share in the huge
annual levy of over-priced and de-natured breakfast cereals
on American food budgets, and you get a measure of the
advertiser's service to the American Home and the Ameri-
can Kiddy. The writer might add, merely as his professional
opinion, that without advertising the breakfast cereal business
would wither in a year, with very considerable benefit to the
health and wealth of American men, women and children.

Death. It is probable that but for the ineffable mortician
and his confederate, the casket-maker, we might by this time
have modified, in the direction of decency, taste and economy,
some of the grotesque burial rites that we inherit from our
savage ancestors. But no. It still costs a tired, poverty-stricken
American laborer about as much to die and be buried as it
does a high-caste Balinese, and the accompanying orgies are,
of course, infinitely more hideous. It is scarcely worth it. Read-
ers interested in this macabre traffic are referred to the study
by John C. Gebhardt for the Russell Sage Foundation. Adver-
tising plays its part, of course, and the appeal, in terms of
menacing solemnity, is invariably to the love of the bereft
ones for the departed. New York columnists still remember
the maggoty eloquence of one Dr. Berthold E. Baer in behalf
of Campbell's Funeral Church, under such headlines as
"Buried with her Canary Bird," "Skookum," etc. This series
ran in New York newspapers during the winter of 1919-1920.
The current advertising of the National Casket Company is
scarcely less gruesome.

'Romance. When we enter the starry fields of romance, the
advertising lines begin to blur, and we can never be sure

224

whether we are dealing with love in its sacred or in its pro-
fane aspects. Of one thing, however, we can always be sure.
We are in the field of sex competition, and the advertiser,
with his varied stock of cosmetics, soaps, gargles and deo-
dorants, figures as Love's Armourer; also, perhaps, as
schatchen; also well, the Elizabethans had a word for it.
The advertiser's sales patter runs somewhat as follows: "You
want a lover. Very well, gargle with Blisterine, use such and
such soaps and cosmetics, and let Cecilia Bilson teach you how
to be charming without cost." The exploitation of love's
young dream is by this time a huge industry in itself. Re-
cently, advertisers of such remotely serviceable products as
radios and razor blades have been trying to muscle in on it.

Profane Love. When we come to the "marriage hygiene"
nee "feminine hygiene" advertisers it becomes clear that we
are dealing with the physical aspects of love. Physical love is
taboo in our society except when legalized by the State; taboo
also, if one were to take our various and tangled State and
Federal statutes seriously (which practically nobody does)
except when having procreation as its object. The debris of
the law, reflecting as it does our obsolete mores, is ridiculous
enough in Connecticut, for example, it is legal for a drug
store to sell contraceptive devices but illegal for a man or
woman to use them.

Very few people obey the law, of course. Birth control is
today one of the facts of American life. It is practiced, or at
least attempted in some form, almost universally.

But the laws remain on the statute books. The shadow of the
taboo remains, and in this shadow the advertising profession
operates what is probably the most flourishing racket in
America, now that Capone is in jail and prohibition is no
more.

In the files of Consumers' Research I counted leaflets adver-
tising some fifty different antiseptics and other contraceptive
products, and in the files of the National Committee on

Maternal Health, some hundred and fifty more. Neither
organization attempts to list them all; the total probably runs
into thousands. Each is represented either directly or by im-
plication to be a convenient, safe and reliable contraceptive.
Meanwhile the gynecologists of the world have been search-
ing for precisely such a thing and say they haven't yet found
it. Meanwhile, the leaders of the English Birth Control
movement, in despair, are demanding the legalization of
abortion, and of sterilization as in Russia. Meanwhile Margaret
Sanger and her lieutenants in the American Birth Control
movement are pointing out that the existing legislation
which prohibits the dissemination of birth control informa-
tion is really class legislation. Upper and middle-class peo-
ple whether married or not can get advice from their doctors
and buy contraceptives at drug stores. The fifty per cent of
the population which lives at or below a subsistence level
can afford neither doctors nor rubber goods. Only a few
thousand can be accommodated by the present capacity of
the birth control clinics.

But gynecologists are merely scientists and Mrs. Sanger is
merely the gallant and indomitable Mrs. Sanger. They
scarcely rank with Doctor Sayle Taylor, LL.D., now,
because of the querulousness of the American Medical Asso-
ciation. As the "Voice of Experience," Doctor Taylor com-
forts thousands of wounded hearts over the radio. In his
personal appearances before Men Only and Women Only he
details the mysteries of love and sells little booklets full of
highly dangerous misinformation and not lacking the address
of a contraceptive manufacturer.

But how about the respectable drug houses whose annual
"take" from the contraceptive racket far surpasses that of
the eloquent "Doctor"?

The hired ad-men of these drug houses perform miracles
of delicacy in conveying to the magazine readers half-truths
and outright deceptions.

226

Take Lysol, for example. In their monumental study "The
Control of Conception," Dr. Robert L. Dickinson and Dr.
Louise Stevens Bryant say flatly that Lysol should be banned
as a contraceptive. Not that it isn't a good antiseptic. It is
indeed, a powerful antiseptic too powerful to be used for
contraceptive purposes except in weak solutions which the
average woman can scarcely be trusted to make with ac-
curacy and not reliable in any case. Further, the clinical evi-
dence to date both in England and in America, indicates that
no antiseptic douche is at all dependable as a contraceptive in
and of itself.

In the earlier stages of the feminine hygiene campaigns,
the language of the ad-men was full of euphemisms, of in-
direction, of tender solicitude for the sad-eyed wives pictured
above such captions as "The Very Women who supposed they
knew, are grateful for these enlightening facts." But recently
the pressure of competition has speeded up the style. "Now
it Can be Told," they declaim, and "Why mince words?"

Some of them don't; for example, the ad-man for Pariogen
tablets, who writes the following chaste communication, ad-
dressed presumably to the automobile trade:

"Pariogen tablets may be carried anywhere in a purse,
making hygienic measures possible almost anywhere, no other
accessories or water being required."

It has been argued that birth control education is a neces-
sary social job, and that the ad-men are doing it. The answer
to that is that they are doing it badly, irresponsibly and ex-
pensively, with a huge by-product of abortion and other
human wreckage and suffering. Thus far birth control has
been the obsession of a few honest crusaders like Mrs. Sanger,
Dr. Dickinson, and Dr. W. J. Robinson. For support, it has
had to let itself be made the plaything of philanthropic social
registerites, and say "please" to an organized medical pro-
fession so divided in its counsels, so terrified of offending the
mores, and so jealous of its emoluments that it has dragged on

the skirts of the movement rather than assume the courageous
leadership which is not merely its right but its obvious duty.
The medical societies of Michigan and Connecticut are nota-
ble exceptions to this judgment.

Despite such handicaps, the labors of Mrs. Sanger, Dr.
Dickinson and others, aided by the gradual relaxation of the
taboo since the war, have achieved the following major re-
sults:

1. Some 144 clinics functioning in 43 States.

2. A technique, which while far from ideal or even com-
pletely reliable is successful in 96 to 98 percentage of cases.

3. An increasing penetration of the daily and periodical
press with birth control propaganda. (Except for one or two
liberal stations with negligible audiences, birth control is
still barred from the air.)

4. Laboratory and clinical research at Yale, the Universi-
ties of London and Edinburgh, and elsewhere, which may at
any moment yield revolutionary results. Russia, of course,
has endowed such research heavily and may be first to solve
the problem.

5. The establishment of birth control courses in practically
all of the leading medical schools, and a considerable propa-
gandizing of the profession through the Birth Control Re-
view which, however, was discontinued in July, 1933.

What could be built now, on the foundations laid by the
devotion of these pioneers? The answer runs in terms of
economics, politics and sociology. A birth control clinic oper-
ated on a fairly large scale, such as the Sanger Clinic in New
York, can provide instruction, equipment and clinical follow-
up for about $5.00 per year per patient. Multiply that $5.00
by about twenty million and you get $100,000,000 a year as
the bill for a publicly administered contraceptive service of
approximate adequacy. Would it be worth $100,000,000? Of
course. Will anything of the sort be done? Probably not.
Why? The Pope and the Propaganda of the Faith, which still,

228

to paraphrase Veblen, "ignores material facts with magisterial
detachment" one of these facts being that wherever birth
control clinics have been opened they have been patronized
by Catholics in full proportion to the percentage of Catholics
in the populations served. The Fundamentalists are equally
obstructive, although their magazines cheerfully publish con-
traceptive advertising. Alas, of course, the big drug houses,
which doubtless would interpose objections on purely moral,
ethical and spiritual grounds. Also the Fourth Estate, whose
freedom to defend the sanctity of the home must not be
impugned or calumniated by any suspicion of a material in-
terest arising out of the advertising income received from the
before-mentioned drug houses. Also the medical profession,
a small part of which feels itself obliged, like the advertising
profession, to turn human life into gold, a large part of which
is plain stupid and timid, and a part of which a small part
is magnificent and may be counted upon to go the limit at
almost any cost to itself.

In contrast to what is being done by the birth control
clinics and what might be done by an intelligent expenditure
of public funds, let's have one more look at how the job is
being done by business men and advertisers interested solely
in "service" and "truth."

It is roughly estimated that the American people spend
about $25,000,000 a year for contraceptive devices and
materials. Largely because of the failure of these commercially
exploited hit-or-miss techniques, Prof. F. J. Taussig of Wash-
ington University estimates that there are about 700,000 abor-
tions every year in this country. This situation is, of course,
highly exploitable, especially because of the bootleg nature
of the traffic. The most popular contraceptive sells at a profit
to the retail druggist of nearly 1000 per cent. According to
Mr. Randolph Cautley of the National Committee on Ma-
ternal Hygiene, the advertising of abortifacients in the pulp
magazines increased 2800 per cent in one year between

229

I93 2 an< 3 1933. It is, of course, a commonplace of medical
knowledge that no abortifacient is effective and that all of
them are highly dangerous as well as illegal. In his survey
which was incomplete because of the limited funds at the
disposal of his organization the three major contraceptive
advertisers spent a total of $412,647 in 1933 Mr. Cautley
counted 16 advertisers who were obviously selling aborti-
facients, 3 5 who were selling contraceptives and 20 classified
as "uncertain." The abortifacient copy is especially discreet.
"Use it when nature fails you," they advertise, and "For un-
natural delay. Double strength. Rushed first class mail.*' Now
and then the Food and Drug Administration catches one of
these rats, but it is difficult, and will continue to be difficult
even under the strengthened provisions of the Copeland Bill.

230

CHAPTER

13

SCIENCE SAYS:

Come Up and See Me Some Time

THE mission of the ad-man is sanctified by the exigencies
of our capitalist economy and of our topsy-turvy acquisitive
pseudoculture. His mission is to break down the sales resistance
of the breadlines; to restore prosperity by persuading us to
eat more yeast, smoke more Old Golds and gargle more
assorted antiseptics. t ;

In fulfilling this mission it is appropriate that the ad-man
invoke divine aid. The god of America, indeed of the modern
world, is the scientist. Today it is only in the Fundamental-
ist, Sunday School quarterlies that God wears long white
whiskers. In the advertising pages of the popular magazines
He wears a pince-nez and an imperial; sometimes He squints
through a microscope; or, instead of Moses' rod, He bran-
dishes a test tube. The scripture which accompanies these pic-
torial pluckings of modern herd responses is austere, erudite,
and asterisked with references to even more erudite foot-
notes. The headline, however, is invariably simple and ex-
plicit. In it the god says that yeast is good for what ails you.

The god is often a foreign god, resident in London, Vienna,
Paris or Budapest. That makes him all the more impressive
and harder for the skeptical savants of the American Medi-
cal Association to get at and chasten.

In response to a recent inquiry printed in the Journal of the
American Medical Association) these savants remarked: "Yeast
is so uncertain in laxative effect that it is hardly justified ta

classify it among the cathartics. . . . That, among the hosts
of persons taking yeast a skin disorder clears up occasionally
is not surprising. The association might be entirely accidental.
The history of yeast, the periodic waning and gaining in
favor, suggest that it has therapeutic value, but that this value
is slight indeed."

Sometimes, as in the case of yeast, the god is appeased by
appropriate sacrifices: $750, f.o.b. London, was the price
offered to and declined by one prominent English medico.
Advertisers, however, have little difficulty in rounding up
plenty of less fastidious impersonators of the deity, and the
required honorariums are distressingly small less than half
what is normally paid to society leaders. After being duly
salved and photographed, surrounded by the paraphernalia
of his profession, the "scientist" gives his disinterested, expert,
scientific opinion. But sometimes he goes further. He proves
that the advertiser's product is the best.

The makers of Old Gold cigarettes have gone in heavily
for this sort of proof. A while back they proved that Old
Gold is the "coolest" cigarette. This demonstration was made
by Drs. H. H. Shalon and Lincoln T. Work, for the New
York Testing Laboratories. They proved, using the "bomb
calorimeter," the "smokometer" and other assorted abra-
cadabra, that an Old Gold cigarette contains 6576 B.T.U.'s;
whereas Brand X contained 6688 B.T.U.'s, Brand Y 6731
B.T.U.'s and Brand Z 6732 B.T.U.'s.

What, by the way, is a B.T.U.? It is an abbreviation for
"British Thermal Unit" a measurement of beat content.
If Old Golds contain a fraction of a per cent less B.T.U.'s
than the other tested cigarettes, does that make them any
"cooler." Not by a jugful. What does it prove? Nothing.

Scientists of this stripe are almost painfully eager to show
that they are good fellows that they are prepared to "go
along." Intellectually, they are humble creatures the altar
boys and organ blowers of the temple of science. They have

232

wives with social ambitions and children who need shoes.
They lack advancement, and when advertisers, who are often
very eminent and respectable, make friendly and respectful
overtures, they are often very glad to serve the needs of
business.

Such friendships would doubtless be more general but for
certain unwarranted apprehensions, especially prevalent
among the banking fraternity. The strong men of Wall Street
have been slow in realizing that the glamorous Lady Lou and
many of these stiff, spectacled earnest creatures of the labora-
tory know their place in an acquisitive society; that beneath
that acid-stained smock there often beats a heart of gold.

Recently Mr. Kettering, vice president and research director
of General Motors, felt obliged to defend the engineer against
the banker's charge that he is upsetting the stability of busi-
ness. Said Mr. Kettering, with a candor which cannot be too
much admired: "The whole object of research is to keep every
one reasonably dissatisfied with what he has in order to keep
the factory busy in making new things."

This definition of the object of engineering research may
seem a little startling at first. But it must be remembered
that Mr. Kettering is not merely an engineer, a scientist, but
also a corporation executive and as such a practical business
man. In fact, it might almost be said that in the statement
quoted Mr. Kettering speaks both as a scientist and as an
advertising man; a scientific advertising man, if you like, or
an advertising scientist. Hence, when he says in effect that
in our society the object of scientific research is the promo-
tion of obsolescence in all fields of human purchase and use,
so that profit-motivated manufacturers may be kept busy
making new things, his words, even though they sound a
little mad, must be listened to with respect. It would appear
that under the present regime of business, subject as it is to
the iron determinants of a surplus economy, the sales function
must be reinforced in every possible way. Hence the lesser

departments of science, with their frail purities, their tradi-
tional humanities, their obsolete and obstructive idealisms,
will be brought more and more under the hegemony of the
new "science" of advertising, than which no department of
science is more pure, more rigorous. The objects and ends
of this science are predetermined: they are, quite simply, to
turn people into gold, or to induce people to turn themselves
into gold.

The medical experimenter may have qualms about vivisect-
ing his guinea pigs until he has first anesthetized them. The
biologist may drop a tear over his holocausts of fruit flies.
But the young Nietzscheans who run the advertising agencies
observe a sterner discipline. The science of advertising is the
science of exploitation, and in nothing is the ad-man more
scientific, more ruthless than in his exploitation of "science.**
He is beyond the "good" and "evil** of conventional morality.
Not for a moment can he afford to forget his motto: "Never
give the moron a break.**

CHAPTER

14

WHOSE SOCIAL SCIENTIST ARE YOU?

AS ADVERTISING became more and more an essential part
of the mechanism of sales promotion, and as our newspapers
and magazines took definite form as advertising businesses,
the advertising profession became highly respectable. It was
part of the status quo of the acquisitive society and could be
effectively challenged only by persons and interests standing
outside this status quo.

As already indicated, the product of advertising was a
culture, or pseudoculture. Advertising was engaged in manu-
facturing precisely the material which our economists, soci-
ologists and psychologists are supposed to study, measure and
interpret necessarily within some framework of judgment.
What framework? Where did our social scientists stand during
advertising's period of expansion and conquest?

They stood aside for the most part while advertising pro-
ceeded to play jackstraws with the "law" of supply and
demand, and other items of orthodox economic doctrine.
Thornstein Veblen saw the thing clearly and his brief treat-
ment of advertising in Absentee Oivnership remains today
the most exact description of the nature of the advertising
phenomenon which has yet appeared. But Veblen was a lone
wolf all his days. And it has been the journalists, publicists
and engineers, rather than the professors, who have made
most effective application of Veblen's insights. Stuart Chase,
a disciple of Veblen, has worked without academic sanctions,

while the director of Consumers' Research, Mr. F. J. Schlink,
is an engineer, and Mr. Arthur Kallet, his collaborator in the
writing of 100,000,000 Guinea Pigs is another. For the most
part, orthodox economists have either ignored advertising, or
in very brief and inadequate treatments, have complained
gently about its "vulgarity," as if, in the nature of the case,
it could be anything but vulgar. A notable exception is the
chapter on "Consumers in the Market" by Professor Corwin
Edwards in the second volume of Economic Behavior by mem-
bers of the Economics department of New York University.
Against this competent and forthright analysis, however,
must be set the sort of thing which Leverett S. Lyon, econ-
omist of Brooking's Institute, contributes to Volume I of the
Encyclopedia of Social Sciences. I quote here the concluding
paragraph of Mr. Lyon's article:

Consumer advertising is the first rough effort of a society becom-
ing prosperous to teach itself the use of the relatively great wealth
of new resources, new techniques, and a reorganized production
method. Whatever eventually becomes of advertising, society must
provide some device for this task. Some agency must keep before the
consumer the possibilities resulting from constant advance, for the
world appears to be learning to produce goods ever faster. Today the
voices crying most loudly in the wilderness of consumption are more
concerned with noisily advertising the weaknesses of advertising
than with patient teaching of standards of taste which will reform
advertising by indirection. Other action is possible. An increase of
government specifications would help, although not as much as is
often thought, and they would require an enormous amount of
advertising. What is most needed for American consumption is
training in art and taste in a generous consumption of goods, if
such there can be. If beauty is profitable, no manufacturer is de-
sirous of producing crudity or vulgarity. Advertising, whether for
good or ill, is the greatest force at work against the traditional
economy of an age-long poverty as well as that of our own pioneer
period; it is almost the only force at work against puritanism in

236

consumption. It can infuse art into the things of life; and it will,
if such an art is possible, and if those who realize what it is will
let the people know.

Intelligent and honest advertising men, at least, will have
no difficulty in recognizing this as a piece of advertising copy
about advertising. Like practically all advertising copy it is a
piece of special pleading and its appearance in an otherwise
excellently edited reference work is calamitous enough in all
conscience.

It may be observed incidentally that Mr. Lyon is a frequent
contributor to the advertising trade press. He stands well
within the status quo, not merely of orthodox economic teach-
ing, but of the advertising business itself. It is natural enough
that he should rationalize and justify the role of advertising
in our society, while making the usual pretense of "objec-
tivity."

The fact is, of course, that as advertising became powerful
and respectable it had a good many well-paid jobs to offer
social scientists, and that none of these jobs tolerated any
degree of "objectivity" whatsoever: Jobs of teaching mer-
chandizing and market analysis in schools of business admin-
istration; jobs for statisticians as directors of research in
advertising agencies; jobs for psychologists in testing new
devices of cozenage, measuring "consumer reactions," etc.
There can be no doubt as to whom these social scientists
belong. They belong to the advertising business, and they can
no more write "objectively" about that business than a copy
writer can write objectively about his client's gargles and
gadgets.

With the rapid growth of the schools of business adminis-
tration since the war, these business-minded economists, psy-
chologists, statisticians, etc., came to rival in number and in
influence their colleagues in the departments of economics
and psychology proper. But even the strictly academic social

scientists, practitioners of a "purer" discipline, found increas-
ing difficulty in sustaining their claim of "objectivity" and
the younger ones, especially the economists, pretty much gave
it up. Both the motivation and the futility of this claim are
well analyzed by Mr. Sidney Hook in an unpublished manu-
script:

The fascination of physical science for the social theorists is easy
to explain. Not only does it possess the magic of success, but what
is vastly more important, the promises of agreements and objec-
tivity. In the popular mind, to be objective and to be "scientific"
are practically synonymous terms. What is more natural, therefore,
than the fact that in a field in which prejudice, bias, selective em-
phasis are notorious, there should be a constant appeal to a neutral
point of view. It is this quest for objective truth from a neutral
point of view, independent of value judgments, which has become
the great fetich of American social science.

It cannot be emphasized too strongly that the social activity
which contributes the subject matter of the social sciences is an
activity carried on by human beings in pursuit of definite ends. If
we take these ends as our starting point nothing is clearer than the
fact that these ends, whether they be of individuals or of classes,
conflict. Social conflicts are a real and permanent feature of the
society in which we live. Every attempt to develop an objective
social science which will do for social organization what science has
done for technology must grapple with the difficulty that there are
as many directions in which social reorganization may be attempted
as there are social classes. The attempt to evade this class conflict
and to refuse to regard it under existing conditions as fundamental
is behind the strenuous effort to emulate the "exact sciences" in
which the only recognized conflict is between the "true" and the
"false."

Taking, as Mr. Hook suggests, the ends sought by adver-
tising as the proper starting point for a consideration of the
phenomenon, let us return to Mr. Lyon's forensic summation

and see what it amounts to. He says: "Consumer advertising
is the first rough effort of a society becoming prosperous to
teach itself the use of the relatively great wealth of new
resources, new techniques and a reorganized production
method." In the first place, advertising is conducted by and
for advertisers, and the dissemination of a material culture
which it accomplishes is strictly in the interest of the adver-
tiser, primarily, and of the total apparatus of the advertising
business secondarily. The advertiser is concerned with "teach-
ing" the consumer only in so far as such teaching profits the
advertiser and the routine product of advertising is therefore
pretty consistently mis-educational rather than genuinely
educational. This "teaching" involves not merely huge eco-
nomic wastes but a definite warping and conditioning of the
consumer's value judgments into conformity with the profit-
motivated interests of the advertiser.

Mr. Lyon proposes, by implication, a "patient teaching of
standards of taste which will reform advertising by indirec-
tion." A teaching by whom and for whom? Advertising is
itself a tremendous "educational" effort which operates in
the interest of the advertiser with incidental profit to the
consumer only in so far as he can disentangle the truth from
a mass of special pleading, this incidental profit being vastly
overbalanced by the mis-educational pressures exerted not
merely on his pocketbook but upon his "taste," that is to say,
his value judgments. Advertising, as Veblen said, is not merely
an enterprise in sales promotion, but an enterprise in the pro-
duction of customers which necessarily becomes an enterprise
in "creative psychiatry." Does Mr. Lyon propose that this
huge interested mis-educational and anti-cultural activity be
balanced and corrected by another educational activity? In
whose interest? Financed and conducted by whom? By Con-
sumers' Research, perhaps? By government? But why should
any government which pretends to govern in the interests of
the people as a whole proceed by "indirection"; that is to say,

educate consumers to resist in their own interest the "educa-
tion" which advertisers disseminate in their interest? Wouldn't
it be simpler to eliminate your negatives first and then see how
much and what kind of positive education is required?

Advertising, says Mr. Lyon, "is almost the only force at
work against puritanism in consumption." By what right and
in whose behalf does he introduce this value judgment into
his argument? Maybe our people would prefer a little more
puritanism in consumption, intolerable as such an attitude
may be to advertisers operating in the "surplus economy"
phase of industrial capitalism. And does advertising really
work against puritanism in consumption? What do you mean,
puritanism in consumption? Buying wheat for what it is
worth instead of "puffed wheat" at eight times as much?
Buying a radio instead of shoes for the baby?

Advertising, says Mr. Lyon, "can infuse art into the things
of life, if such an art is possible, and if those who realize what
it is will let the people know." How? By more advertising,
doubtless, along the lines so frequently proposed by Mr. Bruce
Barton and Mr. Walter Pitkin in the interests, not of the
"people" but of the advertiser and the advertising business?

One gives space to such lamentable rationalizers as Mr.
Lyon only because he represents so typically the values, atti-
tudes and motives of the ad-man's pseudoculture as they are
currently set forth by advertising apologists. We shall en-
counter precisely the same kind of logical jabberwocky when
we come to consider the radio and the movies. Meanwhile,
let us have a look at the role of the psychologists.

240

CHAPTER

15

PSYCHOLOGY ASKS:
How Am I Doing?

ADVERTISING, defined as the technique of producing cus-
tomers, rather than the technique of selling goods and services,
employs well-known psychological devices, and the advertis-
ing man is, in fact, a journeyman psychologist. Academic and
business school psychologists are therefore naturally and prop-
erly interested in advertising as a field of study. But when the
quality and effects of this interest are examined, there would
appear to be a conflict between the layman's naive view of
psychology as a disinterested "objective" scientific discipline,
and certain current activities of academic psychologists in
the field of applied psychology.

In 1920, the founder of the American school of "Behavior-
ism," Dr. John B. Watson, resigned his professorship at Johns
Hopkins and entered the employ of the J. Walter Thompson
Advertising Agency. Psychologists have questioned the origi-
nality and value of Dr. Watson's contributions to the young
science of psychology. But his contributions, as a business
man, to the technique of advertising are outstanding.

The J. Walter Thompson Company is one of the largest and
most consistently successful advertising agencies in the world.
Over the past fourteen years the advertising which it has
turned out has betrayed increasingly the touch of the master's
hand. It is good advertising, effective advertising. It is also
more or less unscrupulous, judged by ethical standards, even
the ethical standards of the advertising profession itself. It is

241

natural that this should be so, since ethical considerations are
irrelevant to the application of scientific method in the ex-
ploitation of the consumer.

Consider the advertising of such products as Fleischmann's
Yeast, Woodbury's Facial Soap, Lifebuoy Soap, Pond's Van-
ishing Cream, etc. all J. Walter Thompson accounts of long
standing. In this and other advertising prepared by this
agency, the fear-sex-emulation formula is used systematically
to "condition the reflexes" of the reader into conformity with
the profit-motivated interests of the advertiser. By putting
the bought-and-paid-f or testimonial technique on a mass pro-
duction basis, this agency has doubtless achieved important
economies for the advertiser in the production of customers.
Dr. "Watson's agency was also one of the leaders in the adapta-
tion to advertising of the story-in-pictures-balloon technique
borrowed from Hogarth via the tabloids. Objections on the
score of ethics and taste are met by the realistic argument
that the market for these products consists chiefly of fourteen-
year-old intelligences, and that the unedifying means used to
convert these morons into customers are justified by the ends
achieved: the profits accruing to the advertiser, the internal
and external cleanliness of the moron, and the fixation of
systematized illusions in the minds of the public, necessary
to the use and wont of an acquisitive society.

Nothing succeeds like success. Probably Dr. Watson was
never obliged to ask his employers, "How am I doing?" His
achievements were manifest, and his present salary as vice
president of his agency is reputed to be four times the maxi-
mum stipend of a university professor.

Nothing succeeds like success. It may well be alleged that
the prestige of business dominates the American psychology,
not excepting the psychology of American psychologists.
Veblen, whose approach to economics was through social psy-
chology and the analysis of institutional arrangements, had
an Olympian respect for himself, and no respect whatever

242

for business. But in terms of pecuniary aggrandizement and
academic kudos, Veblen got nowhere during his lifetime.
Hence it was natural that in the field of applied psychology,
contemporary psychologists would have chosen to follow
Watson rather than Veblen.

In 1921, the year following the elevation of Dr. Watson's
talents to the realms of pecuniary accumulation, an organiza-
tion called the Psychological Corporation was incorporated
under the laws of the State of New York.

The stock of the corporation is held by some 300 American
psychologists, all of them members of the American Psycho-
logical Association, and most of them having the status of
professor or assistant professor in American universities and
colleges.

The second article of the corporation's charter reads as
follows:

The objects and powers of this corporation shall be the advance-
ment of psychology and the promotion of the useful applications
of psychology. It shall have power to enter into contracts for the
execution of psychological work, to render expert services involving
the application of psychology to educational, business, administra-
tive and other problems, and to do all other things not inconsistent
with the law under which this corporation is organized, to advance
psychology and to promote its useful applications.

This article is quoted in one of the sales pamphlets issued by
the corporation and is supplemented by the following para-
graph:

In the hands of those properly qualified, psychology can be ap-
plied usefully to many problems of business and industry, and of
educational, vocational and personal adjustment. The purpose of the
Psychological Corporation is to promote such applications of the
science and to prevent, where possible, its exploitation by pseudo-
scientists. A portion of all fees for services rendered by the cor-

poration is devoted to research and the advancement of scientific
knowledge of human behavior.

At a special meeting of the stockholders and representatives
of the corporation, held in conjunction with the 1933 con-
vention of the American Psychological Association at Chi-
cago, Dr. Henry C. Link, Secretary and Treasurer of the
corporation, presented his report. In effect Dr. Link was ap-
pealing to the value judgments of his colleagues. He was
saying: the corporation has been doing such and such things.
Business, especially the advertising business, thinks we have
been doing pretty well. How do you think we have been
doing?

There was a row, a fairly loud row, judged by academic
standards, and it got into the papers. Some of the assembled
psychologists, themselves stockholders in the corporation,
seemed to feel that Dr. Link had sold the integrity, the purity
of American psychology down the river to the advertising
business. Among the more forthright objectors was Dr. A. W.
Kornhauser, associate professor of Business Psychology at the
University of Chicago. It is interesting to note that the most
strenuous objection came, not from one of the science-for-
science's-sake psychologists, but from a business school pro-
fessor. Perhaps it was because Dr. Kornhauser is more aware
of the nature and methods of business than some of his less
sophisticated associates. But before we discuss this row, it will
be necessary to describe briefly the sort of thing that the
Psychological Corporation had been doing.

Perhaps the most distinguished achievement to which Dr.
Link pointed with pride was co-operative study, carried on
by sixty psychologists, of the effectiveness of advertising,
particularly among housewives. Dr. Link's report of this
study was published in the January, 1933, issue of the Harvard
Business Review.

Between March 16 and April 4, 1933, 1,578 housewives

244

in 15 widely scattered cities and towns were interviewed
by instructors and graduate students of psychology work-
ing under the supervision of some fifteen assorted Ph. D.'s
and M. A.'s. They used a test questionnaire which asked such
questions as the following:

What canned fruit company advertises "Just the Center Slices"?
What toothpaste advertises "Heavens! Buddy must have a girl!"?
What product used in automobiles uses pictures of little black, dogs
in its advertising? What product asks "What is the critical age of
the skin"? What toothpaste advertises "Pink Toothbrush"? What
product for use in automobiles has been using advertisements show-
ing pictures of fish, tigers, flying geese and other animals? What do
85% of dentists recommend (according to an advertisement) for
purifying the breath? What soap advertises "I learned from a beauty
expert how to hold my husband"? What does, for a product used in
automobiles, what butter does for bread? What company or product
advertised "This is Mrs. F. C. Adgerton of Spokane, Washington"?
What company advertises "Don't wait till the doctor tells you to
keep of your feet"? What electric refrigerator is "Dual-automatic"?
What company advertises a widely used toilet product as often
containing "harmful acids"?

There is a total of twenty-seven questions of this sort on
the questionnaire and the housewives had to answer all of
them. The mind shrinks from contemplating either the
amount of high-powered psychological persuasion required
to hold them to their task, or the sufferings endured by these
1,578 female guinea pigs in the cause of "science." How many
doorbells had to be rung before one willing housewife was
captured? Did they suffer? And how much? Dr. Link should
have answered those questions, too. I am sure the answers
would prove something, although I am not sure just what.

What was proved, beyond question, when the question-
naires were all turned in, collated, tabulated, analyzed, etc.,
by the most rigorous scientific methods, was, that, sure

enough, housewives did read advertising. I quote from Dr.
Link's article:

The outstanding result of this test is the proof of the amazing
influence which advertising can and often does exert. For example,
1,090 or 69% of the 1,578 housewives answered "Chase & San-
born" to the question about the "Date on the can." The correct
answer, "Ipana" was given by 943 or 59.7% of these women to the
question regarding "Pink Toothbrush." On the other hand, the
themes of certain very extensive campaigns registered correctly
among only 15.65, 11.3%, and even 7% of these housewives. In
some cases, single advertisements, appearing only once, registered
better than campaigns which had run in all the major magazines
for six months, a year, or longer. That is to say, some advertising
was 50, 100 or 150 times more effective, as measured by this test,
than other advertising. The most conspicuous example of this was
the result of the question, What soap advertises "Stop those runs
in stockings"? This was the headline, explained in the copy, of a
full-page advertisement for Lux soap which had appeared in just
one of the leading women's magazines. Almost one half, of the
housewives, 47.7%, answered "Lux." This one insertion, costing
about $8,000, was found six times as effective as a year's campaign
advertising another article and costing about a million dollars, a
ratio of 750 to i. The average of correct answers to the thirteen
most effective campaigns or advertisements was 36.3%. The aver-
age for the fourteen least effective was 8.8%.

The writer is not qualified to judge the scientific integrity
of Dr. Link's methods. But the findings of this study are
manifestly highly interesting and useful to advertisers, adver-
tising agencies and advertising managers of publications, who,
incidentally got all this research for nothing. It was done
gratuitously by the co-operating psychologists, assistants
and students, as a disinterested effort toward the "advance-
ment of scientific knowledge of human behavior." . . . Well,
perhaps not wholly disinterested. The published study was in

246

effect, a free sample and an advertisement of the sort of thing
the Psychological Corporation is equipped to do. Doubtless
it was a successful advertisement, since the corporation dur-
ing 1933 conducted many scientific investigations, sponsored
and paid for by individual advertisers, and conducted by its
wideflung organization of psychology professors, instructors
and students.

In other words, what Dr. Link was presenting proudly to
his assembled colleagues was a successful advertising busi-
ness, operating efficiently according to current standards, and
using advertising to sell its services. Incidentally this busi-
ness is in a position to cut the market price for advertising
research because public and philanthropic funds help to sup-
port the co-operating professors, and they in turn are able to
use their students as Tom Sawyer labor, sustained wholly or
in part by the pure passion of science.

Whether "scientific" or not, that study of 1,578 house-
wives was indubitably a contribution. To whom and for
what end? Not to science, but to the advertising business, to
the end that it might conduct more efficiently its effort to
"teach the use of the relatively great wealth, of new resources,
new techniques and a reorganized production method." (L.
S. Lyon's definition in the Encyclopedia of Social Sciences) .

This effort makes systematic use of techniques which are
most accurately characterized by Veblen's phrase: "creative
psychiatry." For example, one of the advertising campaigns
tested was that of Ipana Toothpaste, which for the past ten
years or more has been parroting "Pink Toothbrush," in the
effort to make people worry about their gums and buy an
expensive toothpaste, the use of which is alleged to prevent
the gums from bleeding, the advertising being the customary
melange of half-truth, inference and ambiguity.

When, therefore, Dr. Link appealed to the suffrages of his
professional colleagues, it was upon the following grounds:
that the Psychological Corporation has established efficient

machinery by which its members might sell their scientific
abilities and the leg work of their students to advertisers en-
gaged, to quote Veblen once more, in "the creative guidance
of habit and bias, by recourse to shock effects, tropismatic
reactions, animal orientation, forced movements, fixation of
ideas, verbal intoxication. ... A trading on that range of
human infirmities which blossom in devout observances and
fruit in the psychopathic wards."

What happened? The next annual meeting of the Board
of Directors of the Psychological Corporation was held in
New York on Dec. i, 1933. The managing director, Dr.
Paul S. Achilles, explained that the objections of Dr. Korn-
hauser and others may have arisen from insufficient knowl-
edge on the part of many psychologists of the charter and
purposes of the corporation and the nature and extent of its
current activities. He said that inasmuch as the corporation
had never been subsidized nor conceived as an organization
to be supported by subsidies, his efforts for the past three
years had necessarily been concentrated chiefly on putting the
corporation on a self-sustaining basis.

It was Dr. Achilles' opinion that the two basic assumptions
on which the corporation was founded are: (i) That psy-
chologists render services of economic value; and (2) that a
business organization of co-operative psychologists rendering
such services could not only be self-supporting and useful
to the science but could earn funds for research and improve-
ment of services. He felt that only as the corporation suc-
ceeded first in demonstrating its capacity for self-support
through rendering creditable and marketable services such
as it was now offering could it hope to achieve its larger aims.
In brief his feeling was that it was equally if not more re-
spectable for psychologists to earn their own way and their
funds for research than to depend on subsidies.

Dr. W. S. Woodworth, of Columbia, expressed the opinion
that one of the original aims of the corporation was to have

248

frankly a commercial standing so that it could do business
with business men with more freedom and directness than a
university professor usually feels that he can. Further, in
regard to the corporation's market survey work, that this
seemed a legitimate field and that the mere fact that a mar-
ket study involved personal interviewing did not make it
unworthy or undignified.

The matter was clinched by the treasurer's report showing
an 125% increase of gross receipts by the corporation over
the preceding year, and payments of $7,000 to psychologists
representing the corporation and their students. The cor-
poration, which had been in the red for some time, was
climbing out. Dr. Achilles (who incidentally has been serving
without salary) and Dr. Link were re-elected as managing
director and secretary-treasurer respectively. Other names
on the present list of officers and directors are J. McKeen
Cattell, E. L. Thorndike, L. M. Terman, Walter Dill Scott,
W. V. B. Bingham, A. T. Poffenberger, R. S. Woodworth and
Ronsis Likert.

So that is that, as we used to say when the client laid down
the law at an advertising conference. It looks bad for my old
friends in the research departments of the advertising agencies.
If the Psychological Corporation, under its present efficient
management, continues to progress, this sweated academic
scab labor is going to take the bread out of the mouths of a
lot of families I know in Bronxville, Great Neck and else-
where. Doubtless, too, the standards of advertising research
will be greatly improved, when the job is taken over by
psychologists instead of the more or less irresponsible appren-
tices in the agencies to whom such work is ordinarily assigned.

In the old days before the war I remember that advertis-
ing research was considered to be something of a joke. You
knew the answer before you started out. Your job was to
get the documents. We, too, went out with questionnaires,
were chased down the street by irate Italian green grocers,

249

and got our toes caught in doors closed energetically by un-
co-operative housewives. It really wasn't so very dignified,
Dr. Woodworth, but it had its humorous compensations and
it kept one in the open air. I recall a two-hundred-pound
football player who on graduation drifted into an advertis-
ing agency where I worked and was assigned to research. It
was the middle of July, and he had to interview some fifty
housewives residing somewhere in the Oranges. I forget what
he had to ask them. Did they use Gypso, maybe, and if not
why not?

His name was call him Mr. Retriever. Two days later,
Retriever stumbled back into the office in a state of moral
and physical exhaustion. Somebody was callous enough to
ask him how he had been doing and how he felt.

'Tve lost twenty pounds," said Mr. Retriever. "I feel like
the hobo who started cross the continent by freight. He got
aboard the car next the engine and the brakeman kicked him
off. He grabbed the next car and got aboard. The brakeman
kicked him off, but he scrambled back into the third car.
This ritual continued until the train stopped at a way sta-
tion, when the hobo walked to the front of the train and got
aboard the first car. The brakeman spotted him and in ex-
asperation demanded: "Brother, where in hell are you going?"
"I'm going to Kansas City," replied the hobo, "if my tail
holds out."

The sacrifices of dignity demanded of an advertising re-
searcher are in fact extreme. I recall a baby- faced collegian
who rang a doorbell somewhere in the wilds of Bergen
County. There appeared in the doorway a comely middle-
aged German woman who listened silently to his patter,
meanwhile scrutinizing him shrewdly. When he finished,
she gave him a ravishing smile and said: "I know what you
want. You want a piece of apfelkuchen." The collegian
blushed, searched his conscience and said: "Yes." This par-
ticular anecdote has a Rabelaisian sequel which the writer

250

feels obliged to withhold, in deference to the feelings of the
Better Business Bureau. In a contribution to the Nov. 9,,
1933, issue of Printers 9 Ink, Dr. Link states that "during the
last two years we have interviewed almost 12,000 women in
their homes, in more than sixty cities and towns." One is sure
that the anecdotal literature of advertising research has been
greatly enriched by these investigations.

It is possible, of course, that the Psychological Corporation,
representing as it does the idealism and public spirit of Ameri-
can psychologists, is secretly engaged in boring from within
the advertising business; one notes the repeated references ta
the scientific research which these pot-boiling activities are
designed to finance. Possibly the corporation intends to take
ias a point of departure Veblen's description of advertising as
an enterprise in "creative psychiatry," and, using the data
obtained by its commercially sponsored investigations, in-
stitute studies designed to show just what the advertising
business has done to improve or debauch the mental, ethical
and moral level of the average American. An attitude of
suspended judgment is therefore indicated. The difficulty is
that a study such as that above suggested would require some
framework of value judgment, which would be most un-
scientific. And if, in spite of this objection, the corporation
elected to make such a study, to whom would it report its
results, asking again, "How am I doing?"

CHAPTER

16

THE MOVIES

ALTHOUGH not a part of the advertising business proper,
the movie industry maintains and is maintained by a huge
and efficiently operated advertising apparatus the dozen or
so popular movie magazines whose combined circulation of
over 3,000,000 ranks next in volume to that of the women's
magazines.

These magazines serve in effect as house organs for the
$42,000,000,000 movie industry which every week spreads
its wares before 77,000,000 American movie-goers, including
28,000,000 minors. But like other mass and class publica-
tions these movie magazines are also house organs for their
advertisers chiefly manufacturers of cosmetics, drugs and
fashion goods. How this dual role is worked out and how the
movie magazines articulate into the general economic scheme
of the movie industry becomes at once apparent when we
examine their promotion literature. I quote from a loose-
leaf promotion booklet issued by Photoplay Magazine, the
largest and most successful of the movie magazines:

Photoplay offers you a concentrated, compact audience of 600,-
ooo predominantly younger women the New Wanters . . . Pho-
toplay ... is outstandingly tributary to the great sales-making,
want-building influence of the screen.

We begin to glimpse what is perhaps the major role of the

2J2

movie in our society, and a little later, in a signed statement
by the editor, Mr. James R. Quirk, we find this role explicitly
stated:

It became increasingly apparent to the publishers of Photoplay
that the vast public who spent millions through motion picture
box offices was interested in more than the stories flashed upon the
screen; that they were absorbing something beyond the vicarious
emotions and adventures of the screen folk.

The millions of young women who attended motion pictures
began to realise that, closely observing the stars and leading women
of the screen, they could take lessons to enhance their own attrac-
tiveness and personality. Hollywood became the beauty center of
the world. . . .

Following closely the new interests which the motion picture
provoked in the minds of the audience, and the desires of millions
of women to profit by their achievement of beauty, the magazine
sent experts on beauty and fashions and famous photographers to
Hollywood and reported to its readers every new phase of the de-
velopment of feminine attractiveness. These subjects today share
in basic importance with the news of Hollywood pictures and
personalities.

That made Photoplay outstanding as a medium for advertisers.
... Its readers are inspired by the editorial pages to buy the goods
shown in its advertising pages. The editorial and advertising in-
terests dovetail perfectly.

Its fashion and beauty editors, all of whom have had training in
actual merchandising, are recognized by the trades as experts. Such
stores as Marshall Field & Company of Chicago use its fashion
pages in their selections and merchandising, and credit Photoplay
in their newspaper advertising, recognizing the combined style
promotion power of the screen and the magazine. Thousands of
beauty shops throughout the country receive and display its an-
nouncements of new Hollywood coiffures and new beauty methods
of the most beautiful stars.

One somehow gets the impression that Mr. Quirk knows

what the motion picture industry is all about and what it is
for. This impression is confirmed when we note that Photo-
play lists over 80 well-known manufacturers of drugs, cos-
metics and fashion goods among its 1931-32 advertisers. It
is further confirmed by the following even more explicit
statement of the nature of the business, quoted from the same
source:

When women go to the movies they go to see themselves not in
the mirror but in the ideal world of fancy. During that hour or
two in the romantic world of make-believe, potent influences
are at work. New desires are instilled, new wants implanted, new
impulses to spend are aroused. These impulses may be at the moment
only vague longings, but sooner or later they will crystallize into
definite wants.

When the American woman sees her favorite screen actress and
notes with very keen interest every detail of her attire . . . she is
immersed in that mood which makes her most receptive to the
suggestion that she must have these lovely things for her own . . .
and she will scheme and plan to have for her own the charming
frocks and appealing millinery, the smart footwear, the seductive
furs and wraps all the tempting possessions which the silver
screen has so seductively exposed to her view. . . .

The motion picture paves the -way. Photoplay carries on, renew-
ing the impulses caught on the screen. It gives your product's ad-
dress and telephone number.

The facts are as stated, and the argument is logical and
convincing. It is clinched on the next page by a skillful
reference to what is without doubt the major asset of this
movie-advertising coalition, which is Youth.

Last year two million, next year two million, in the next ten
years twenty million, young men and women will come of age. . . .

They will want necessities, pleasures, luxuries. And they will get
them because their buying temperature is high. ... It will pay

254

you handsomely to find the best point of contact with these mil-
lions of new wanters. It will pay you to lay your wares before
them in the atmosphere of enthusiasm and romance in which the
desire to own the good things of life is engendered. . . . Photo-
play's audience, 600,000 strong, is predominantly -with the younger
women.

What is the nature of this admirable piece of promotion
literature, prepared under the direction of one of America's
leading publisher's consultants?

It is, quite evidently, by way of being applied sociology
and psychology. It is supplemented by tables and graphs
showing the buying power of Photoplay's readers, these be-
ing based on the research of Daniel Starch, Ph. D., who op-
erates a well-known and successful commercial research
bureau. Dr. Starch's figures seem startlingly high, but there is
really no good reason for supposing that his study was less
honest, less "objective," than that of the group of sociologists,
psychologists and educators who conducted the Payne Fund
study of the motion picture with respect to its influence
upon children and adolescents. Dr. Starch was employed by
the allied motion picture-advertising business which has an
axe to grind, and admits it. The Payne Fund investigation
was financed by a philanthropic foundation and instigated
by a middle-class reform organization, the Motion Picture
Research Council, which also has an axe to grind, a moral axe,
if you will. A little later we shall encounter another eminent
sociologist and psychologist operating in this arena, namely
Mr. Will Hays, who also has an axe to grind and more or less
admits it, although in the nature of the case Mr. Hays' opera-
tions require a lavish output of pragmatic make-believe.

But first let us attempt to construct, on the foundations
already laid, a slow-motion picture of what this business is
and how it works.

As in all other forms of advertising, the causal sequence

255

traces back to mass production as the most profitable tech-
nique of exploiting the "art and science" of the motion pic-
ture. Mass production requires mass distribution (including
block booking and blind booking) and mass advertising; also
standardization of the product in terms of maximum sal-
ability and a systematic "production of customers by a pro-
duction of systematized illusions." The Payne Fund investi-
gators discovered with horror that between 75 and 80 per
cent of current motion pictures deal with crime, sex and love
obstinately refusing to merge the second two categories.

Surely this is pretty much beside the point; an analysis of
Shakespeare's plays would probably show an even higher
content of such subject matter.

The Photoplay promotion booklet, written by people who
really know something about the industry, hits the nail on
the head in emphasizing the standard content of romance,
luxury and conspicuous expenditure. This is not only the
commodity of maximum salability, but in the process of its
manufacture and sale there emerges an important by-product
which is duly sold to advertisers by the movie magazines.

Why does the motion picture with a high content of "ro-
mance," "beauty" and conspicuous expenditure represent
the standard movie product of maximum salability? Because
the dominant values of the society are material and acquisi-
tive. And because the masses of the population, being eco-
nomically debarred from the attainment of these values in
real life, love to enjoy them vicariously in the dream world
of the silver screen. The frustrations of real life are both
alleviated and sharpened by the pictures. As in the case of
sex, the imaginative release is only partially satisfying, and
the female adolescent, particularly, leaves the motion picture
theatre scheming, planning "to have for her own ... all
the tempting possessions which the silver screen has so se-
ductively exposed to her view." From this point Photoplay
carries on, and renews the sweet torture in both its editorial

256

and advertising columns, so that the stenographer goes with-
out lunch to buy her favorite star's favorite face cream. The
sales cycle is now completed, and the following mentioned
profit-makers have duly participated: the producer, distrib-
utor and exhibitor of the motion picture; the motion picture
magazine; Dr. Starch, who helped to present the merits of the
motion picture magazine to the advertiser; the advertising
agency which got a 15 per cent commission on the cost of
the advertising space; the advertiser and all the distributive
links ending with the drug store that sold the stenographer
the vanishing cream (net manufacturing cost eight cents,
retail price $1.00).

But we are not through yet. The exploitative process as
above outlined runs counter to the residual Puritanism, both
consumptive and sexual of the American middle class, par-
ticularly the middle-class resident in that section of America
referred to in the shop talk of the industry as "the Bible
Belt." The movie industry is obliged, for honest commer-
cial reasons, to break down this Puritanism. But the Puri-
tans feel obliged to organize and effectuate their sales resist-
ance, if only to protect their children from the corruptive
influence of the movie industry. They also feel morally
obliged to protect the children and adolescents of the lower
classes and prevent them from enjoying almost the only kind
of emotional release which their economic condition permits
them.

So censorship movements spring up here, there and every-
where, usually sponsored and financed by the church groups,
women's clubs, parent-teacher organizations, etc., through
which the middle class expresses its view of the morals, ex-
penditure and conduct appropriate for an eighteen-year-old
proletarian typist. These movements provided jobs and sal-
aries chiefly for preachers without other "calls" and for
women's club leaders enjoying more eminence than income.

Naturally, the industry felt obliged to defend its vested

257

interest in the exploitation of the American masses, and spe-
cifically of the American kiddy, sub-flapper and flapper. That
made more jobs, and since the industry was better organized
and in a position to pay adequate salaries to such genuinely
gifted propagandists as Will Hays, the industry invariably
won. Mr. Hays makes use of a well-known principle of ap-
plied sociology which is expressed in the formula: "If you
can't beat 'em, join 'em." With his characteristic evangelical
enthusiasm, Deacon Hays has managed in one way or an-
other to "join" almost every movie-reform movement which
has appeared on the horizon during his long tenure of office
as President of the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors
of America, Inc., popularly known as the "Hays office."

The public relations machinery operated by the Hays of-
fice is in effect a two-way system of diplomatic communica-
tion between the industry and the various pressure groups
which represent public opinion as applied to the movies.
Since Mr. Hays is employed by and responsible to the industry,
he is expected to see that these pressure groups interfere as
little as possible with the business as usual of the movies. But
being a man of talent, and a sociologist of parts, the good
deacon does a lot better than that. He strives always, and
often with notable success, to induce these reform groups to
become propagandists for the Hays office and salesmen of the
Hollywood product, to the end that the Hays office, far from
being merely a defense against censorship, may become a
positive and useful sales promotion department for the
industry as a whole. With this in view he has built up three
major instrumentalities: (i) the National Board of Review,
which clears and effectuates the judgments of ten organized
pre-viewing groups: The International Federation of Catholic
Alumnae, National Council of Jewish Women, National
Society of Daughters of the American Revolution, the Con-
gress of Parents and Teachers, National Society of New Eng-
land Women, General Federation of Women's Clubs,

258

Women's University Club of Los Angeles, Boy Scouts of
America and Young Men's Christian Association. Note that
these are all middle-class organizations, chosen because it is in
middle-class pressure groups that censorship movements origi-
nate, although the bulk of the industry's income is derived
from the lower classes and lower middle classes. In other words
representatives of the ruling middle and upper classes are
invited to pass on what movies the masses are permitted to
see.

(2) The local Motion Picture Councils, Better Film Com-
mittees, etc., consisting usually of club women, church
women and local parent-teacher groups organized to deal
with the 12,000 "neighborhood theatre situations" into which
Mr. Hays breaks down his field organization problem. In
3,000 of these "situations" there is today a public group of
some kind working with the theatre manager, and the mem-
bership of these groups is somewhere between 50,000 and
100,000.

(3) The Studio Relations Committee in Hollywood,
which digests and clears the data coming in from the field,
determines broad lines of production policy as it is affected
by the organized opinion of these groups, and enables each
producer to learn from the mistakes of the others.

Now watch what happens when this machinery goes into
action. Some of these pre- viewing groups pass some pictures;
others pass other pictures. In the end most 'of the pictures
are likely to be passed by some one of the groups. This per-
mits Dr. Hays to announce in his annual report for 1932 that
of 476 feature films reviewed by seven committees 413
(86.7%) were "variously endorsed for family, adult and
child entertainment ... by one or more of these commit-
tees." There we have not merely censorship reduced to in-
nocuity, but a positive testimonial asset which the Hays
office duly capitalizes by spreading the glad news to his field
organization that "unsophisticated films pay . . . more than

8o per cent of box-office champions of last year also endorsed
in National Previewing Groups selections." And the motion
picture committee of the General Federation of Women's
Clubs sends out a statement of its program for the year urg-
ing each local club committee to take as its slogan, "Be Bet-
ter Film Buyers."

But this isn't all. When the motion picture code hearings
were held in Washington a group of representative club
women appeared to protest against the evil of double fea-
tures, which the producers also object to for profit reasons.
And when Henry James Forman's book, Our Movie-Made
Children, appeared the Pennsylvania Clubwoman, according
to an article in the Christian Century, attacked this popular-
ization of the Payne Fund studies and the Motion Picture
Research Council which instigated these studies.

So that a neutral layman, listening to the hue and clamor
about the movies, finds it a bit difficult to determine whether
the Hays office has joined the reformers or the reformers
have joined the Hays office. But the result is not in doubt.
The industry has won every battle thus far, including the
battle of Washington at which the motion picture code was
signed. In this code the industry got practically everything it
asked for, including an undisturbed continuance of the blind
booking and block booking practices by which the big pro-
ducers are enabled to ensure a part of their market in advance
of production. What did the reformers get? They got Presi-
dent-Emeritus Abbott Lawrence Lowell, of Sacco and Vanzetti
fame, sitting on a committee with Eddie Cantor and Marie
Dressier to safeguard the morality of the movies and the
interests of the artists. This was supposed not to be funny,
but Dr. Lowell couldn't see it that way and resigned. Dr.
Lowell is now president of the Motion Picture Research Coun-
cil, which instigated the Payne Fund studies of the effects
of the motion pictures upon children, and that was also a
serious matter.

260

Prior to the Payne Fund studies, the reform of the motion
picture had been almost the exclusive province of preachers,
club women, parent-teachers, Y. M. C. A. secretaries, Scout
Masters, etc. Naturally the sociologists, educators, psycholo-
gists and other academic savants wanted in; there was a con-
siderable overproduction of social scientists during the late
New Era, and the universities and colleges were not able to
absorb the surplus. Moreover, the Great Movie Argument,
what with one thing and another, and especially Will Hays,
had become loud, raucous and most unscientific. It was clearly
up to the social scientists to Establish the Facts.

The Facts, as determined by eighteen assorted sociologists,
psychologists and educators, are set forth in nine volumes
published by Macmillan, and are also summarized and popu-
larized in a book by Henry James Forman entitled Our
Movie-Made Children. It took four years to dig up the Facts,
which, however, turned out to be pretty much what every-
body knew all the time: that children who attend the movies
frequently are likely to be stupider than children who don't
go to the movies at all (this is also probably true of adults) ;
that very young children are frequently shocked and nerv-
ously injured by horror pictures; that the movies not only
reflect our changing sexual mores but also affect them girls
learn about men from John Gilbert and Clark Gable; boys
learn about women from Clara Bow and Greta Garbo. Life
then proceeds to imitate the art and pseudoart of the movies,
in respect both to sex and to other aspects of conduct. Other
findings were that children do learn from the movies and
retain much of what they learn; that the movies constitute
in effect an independent, profit-motivated educational ap-
paratus rivalling and sometimes surpassing in influence the
home and the school; that the movies can be and are used as
propaganda for and against war, for and against different
racial groups; that gangster pictures, with or without moral
endings, tend to teach gangsterism.

261

Although the investigators made much pother about the
"objective" "scientific" nature of this fact-finding study,
they could scarcely escape value judgments, and Mr. Forman
frankly applies such judgments in his popularization. They
are middle-class value judgments, derived from the con-
ventional mores of the middle-class community, and applied
to an industry which is organized to serve not the classes,
but the masses. These value judgments crop out when
Cecil De Mille's ineffable "King of Kings" is cited as a "good"
picture, and when Mr. Forman quotes the testimony of high
school and college youngsters, asked to describe what effect
the movies had on their lives. A college boy remarks sensibly
enough :

The technique of making love to a girl received considerable of
my attention . . . and it was directly through the movies that I
learned to kiss a girl on her ears, neck and cheeks, as well as on the
mouth.

The implication is clear that such techniques are highly
reprehensible, whereas on purely objective grounds there
would appear to be something to be said for them.

But what the Payne Fund investigators didn't find is almost
more interesting than what they did find. For instance, they
failed to remark the role of the movie as commercial prop-
aganda in promoting the enterprise of the advertiser. The
consistent class bias of the movies also escaped attention al-
though it is apparent enough both in the news reels and in
the feature pictures. During the 1932 Communist-led Hun-
ger March on Washington the newsreels were even more
unfair than the press in deriding and misrepresenting the
marchers. And who ever saw an American movie featuring
as hero a successful strike leader?

As one of our three major instruments of social communica-
tion, the movie is an instrument of rule. Naturally, in a

262

business-ruled society, the movie serves the propaganda re-
quirements of business, both as to commerce and politics.
Why did the industry get what it wanted and the reformers
get nothing when the movie code was signed? Isn't it pos-
sible that the administration felt that it needed the good-will
of the industry in order to stay in office?

Dr. W. W. Charters, director of the four-year study fi-
nanced by the Payne Fund, remarks in his introduction to
Mr. Forman's volume: "the commercial movies present a
critical and complicated situation in which the whole-hearted
and sincere co-operation of the producers with parents and
public is essential to discover how to use motion pictures to
the best advantage of children."

One is tempted to ask "What parents and what public?"
The middle-class, more or less religious, more or less Puritan
parents would doubtless like a good deal less frank sex in
the movies, more "education" and more "wholesome" ro-
mance of the Ladies' Home Journal variety. But the younger
generation of the great cities might be expected to assert,
with some justice, that there is both more art and more
health in the sex movie at its worst than in the average
woman's magazine romance. There would probably be equally
violent disagreement concerning other varieties of social con-
tent. The radical labor movement, if it were strong enough
to have an effective voice in the reform of the movies, would
presumably demand that the producers stop using news reels
and feature pictures as anti-labor propaganda, and even give
them an occasional picture with a strike leader as hero. One
doubts that the middle-class reform groups would either
make or support such a demand.

The dilemma, which would have become apparent if, as
originally planned, a competent and sufficiently unorthodox
economist had been included in the group that made the
Payne Fund study, is that the movie industry represents Big
Business operating in a cultural field, but for purely com-

263

mercial purposes. The industry will co-operate "whole-
heartedly and sincerely" with anybody and everybody for the
good of the industry as determined by box office receipts.
Pressure groups, whether middle-class or proletarian, which
would like to see a different set of value judgments, will in
the end, one suspects, be obliged to shoot their own movies
and build their own audiences.

No mention has been made of the use of the movie for
direct advertising purposes. The "sponsored" movie a more
or less entertaining short subject, advertising a commercial
product or service and introduced into a regular program
was tentatively tried out in 1929 and 1930. The idea was to
sell the advertiser a given run of his sponsored short in chain
theatres. The theatres "owned" their audiences, or thought
they did, and would have been glad to sell the "fans" at so
much a head to the advertisers. But the audiences proved
restive and the idea was pretty much abandoned. A certain
modicum of two-timing is observable in the current run of
pictures, but it ordinarily takes the form of propaganda
rather than of advertising. The industry frequently needs to
use the paraphernalia of the army and the navy. It is therefore
good business to permit a percentage of army and navy prop-
aganda in the pictures. As for the use of the pictures and en-
dorsements of movie stars in advertising, that is merely a
by-product of the industry and a part of its promotion tech-
nique. Whether or not the public credits the sincerity of these
endorsements is unimportant; they sell goods and they advertise
the star.

264

CHAPTER

17

RULE BY RADIO

RADIO broadcasting came into the world like a lost child
born too soon and bearing the birthmark of a world culture
which may never be achieved.

Her begetters, the physicists and engineers, didn't know
what to make of the creature. That she was wistful for a
world not yet born did not occur to them. Indeed her be-
getting was in a sense accidental. They had been thinking of
something else. And as for bringing her up, that was scarcely
their affair. Men of science are notoriously neglectful of their
technical progeny. Observing this neglect an American his-
torian, Vernon Parrington, was moved to remark that "science
has become the drab and slut of industry."

Radio had to belong to somebody. She couldn't belong to
nobody. So one day Business picked her up off the street and
put her to work selling gargles, and gadgets, toothpaste and
stocks and bonds. What else could have happened? Neither
art nor education had the prestige or the resources to com-
mand the services of this new instrument of communication,
even if they had had anything important to communicate,
which may be doubted. Government? But in America gov-
ernment was business and business was government to a far
greater degree than in any other country. So that the de-
velopment of the "art and science of radio broadcasting"
became in America a business enterprise, instead of a govern-
ment monopoly as in England and elsewhere in Europe.

265

About two years ago, Dr. Lee De Forest, one of the pio-
jieers of electronic science, and by general concession one of
trie begetters of radio, encountered the lost child in his travels
and was inexpressibly shocked:

"Why should any one want to buy a radio or new tubes for an
old set?" declaimed the irate inventor, "when nine-tenths of what
one can hear is the continual drivel of second-rate jazz, sickening
crooning by degenerate sax players, interrupted by blatant sales
talk, meaningless but maddening station announcements, impudent
commands to buy or try, actually imposed over a background of
what might alone have been good music? Get out into the sticks,
away from your fine symphony orchestra pickups, and listen for
twenty-four hours to what eighty per cent of American listeners
have to endure! Then you'll learn what is wrong with the radio
industry. It isn't hard times. It is broadcasters' greed which is
worse. The radio public simply isn't listening in."

One wonders why Dr. De Forest should have been so sur-
prised to encounter this Bedlam on the air. Surely he was
familiar with its terrestrial equivalent. At the moment, in
fact he was engaged in fighting the Radio Corporation of
America in the courts.

The vulgarity and commercial irresponsibility of advertis-
ing-supported broadcasting have been greatly complained
about. Yet there is a sense in which the defenders of the
American system of broadcasting are right. Radio is a new
instrument of social communication that and nothing more.
In and of itself it contributed nothing qualitative to the
culture. It was right, perhaps, or at least inevitable that it
should communicate precisely the pseudoculture that we
had evolved. Can any one deny that it did just that? The
culture, or pseudoculture, was acquisitive, emulative, neurotic
and disintegrating. Our radio culture is acquisitive, emulative,
neurotic and disintegrating. The ether has become a great

266

mirror in which the social and cultural anomalies of our
"ad-man's civilization" are grotesquely magnified. The con-
fusion of voices out of the air merely echoes our terrestrial
confusion.

This confusion becomes particularly apparent when at-
tempts are made to challenge exploitation of radio by busi-
ness. In the van of such attacks are the educators, marching
under the banner of "freedom" and "culture" and invoking
such obsolete political concepts as "States' Rights." Allied
with the educators is the Fourth Estate. The appeal is to
"public opinion," expressed and made effective through the
machinery of representative government in a political de-
mocracy where one man's vote is as good as another's. But
we have already had occasion to examine the status of the
Fourth Estate and of Education in our civilization. The press
is essentially an advertising business and as such a part of the
central acquisitive drive of the culture. Education is a formal,
traditional function which becomes increasingly peripheral,
decorative and sterile when it adheres to its ideals of disin-
terested "objectivity" and increasingly pragmatic and voca-
tional when it attempts to relate itself to the acquisitive real-
ities of business as usual. The press has a vested interest both
in the purveying of news and as a medium of advertising;
commercial broadcasting chiselled into the advertising in-
come of the press and latterly began to compete in the field
of news purveying. Hence the interest of the press in "re-
forming" the radio was strictly competitive and pecuniary
in quality although, of course, the appeal to public opinion
was not made in those terms. It may fairly be alleged that
the interest of the educators was also, and not improperly, a
job-holding and job-wanting interest, although again the
appeal to public opinion was not made in those terms. As
for the artists, the writers, poets, dramatists and critics, who
might claim a modicum of service from Radio well, art
is scarcely an organized and independent estate in an acquisi-

267

tive society. The artists tend either to accept service as the
cultural lieutenants of business, to retreat into ivory towers
or to become frank revolutionaries claiming allegiance to a
hypothetical future "classless culture" and to the "militant
working class" also more or less hypothetical at the present
stage of the social process.

The American system is quantitatively successful as judged
by the rapid extension of service some kind of service to
about 1 5 ,000,000 American homes. Today the potential radio
audience numbers over 60,000,000. In less than twelve years
radio has become a cultural indispensable and has introduced
important new factors into the social and political process.

The bill for this service is paid first by the set owners. Mr.
H. O. Davis of the Ventura Free Press estimates the annual
amount of this bill, covering the cost of power, new tubes,
repairs and replacements of radio sets, at $300,000,000. The
same authority estimates that the maximum annual expendi-
tures of all broadcasting stations and networks, including
the operation of enormously expensive advertising sales de-
partments, is not more than $80,000,000 and that $50,000,000
covers the total expense for the actual production and trans-
mission of all programs.

The estimates are based on the technical and economic
status quo of the "art and science of radio" as developed by
business. Mr. Davis undertook a reconnaissance study of this
status quo, which took the form of an analysis of a typical
day's output transmitted to the listening public by 206
American broadcasting stations. The following is quoted
from his summarized findings:

The average number of interruptions for sales talk during a
total of 2365 hours of broadcasting, sustaining programs included,
was 5.28 per hour per station.

The average number of interruptions for sales talks during 119?
program-hours sponsored by advertisers was 9.36 per hour. (In-

268

terruptions for station announcements are not included in these
tigures.)

On 1195 hours of programs sponsored by advertisers the sales
talks consumed 174.7 hours, or 14.61 per cent of the total pro-
gram time, almost three times the maximum permitted on Canadian
programs.

The number of "spot ads," sales talks unaccompanied by enter-
tainment supplied by the advertiser, totaled 5092 and consumed
57 hours. Canada prohibits the broadcasting of "spot ads."

Out of a total of 2365 broadcasting hours 789 hours, or 32.26
per cent, were consumed by the playing of phonograph records.
"Electrical transcriptions" specially made records consumed 30
hours or 4.82 per cent of the total broadcasting time.

A little more than 75 per cent of the entire number of hours
was devoted to music of some kind.

All musical programs consumed 1845 hours.

On the day of the survey the 206 stations under observation
broadcast 9% hours of symphony-orchestra music, devoting .6 per
cent of the total music time to this type of entertainment. The
same number of hours was filled by the output of so-called haywire
or hill-billy orchestras.

Dance orchestras, on the other hand, filled 388 hours or 21 per
cent of the total music-time with jazz.

Other instrumental and vocal music of the popular variety,
crooners included, occupied 1219 hours, two-thirds of the total
music-time.

From the quantitative standpoint vaudeville is next in importance
to music. It occupies almost half of the time not given over to
music. Vaudeville includes reviews, jinks, dramatic sketches, jam-
borees and similar mixtures of entertainment.

The third largest portion of all broadcasting time is taken up by
sales talks of advertisers, which consume 8.5 per cent of all time
on the air, including both sponsored and sustaining time. In fact,
commercial sales talks consume as much of the broadcasting time
as all news broadcasts, all religious and political addresses and two-
thirds of the lectures put together. . . .

On a typical day the average station will devote three-quarters

269

of its programs to some kind of musical presentation, but the high-
est class of symphony-orchestra music will be heard during one-half
of one per cent of the total music time. And when music is on
the air, four programs out of ten will consist of the playing of
phonograph records. More than five times every hour the pro-
gram will be interrupted for the delivery of a sales talk lasting in
excess of one minute. In addition there will also be four breaks per
hour in the program continuity for station announcements, making
a total of nine interruptions per hour.

The reader, who is also probably a radio listener, will be
able to dub in the sounds that go with this statistical picture:
the bedlamite exhortations and ecstacies, the moronic coquet-
ries and wise-cracks, the degenerate jazz rhythms, punctu-
ated by the ironic blats and squeals of a demon from the outer
void known as "Static." An evening spent twiddling the dials
of a radio set is indeed a profoundly educational experience
for any student of the culture. America is too big to see
itself. But radio has enabled America to hear itself, and what
we hear, if closely attended to, supplies important clues to the
present state of the culture.

When we turn to the educators who have struggled for
the uplift of radio what we find is merely further proof of
the cultural disintegration which radio makes audible. It may
be said without serious exaggeration that the problem of the
controlling and administering of radio broadcasting is ap-
proximately coextensive with the problem of controlling the
modern world in the economic and cultural interests of the
people who inhabit it. Granted that the radio is socially and
culturally one of the most revolutionary additions to the
pool of human resources in all history how does one go about
integrating it with a civilization which itself functions with
increasing difficulty and precariousness? Radio is potentially,
even to a degree actually, an instrument of world communi-
cation. But the interests of the world population divide along

270

racial, national and class lines. If these terrestrial conflicts
could be reconciled, presumably we should have harmony on
the air even conceivably the communication of a world cul-
ture. As it is, the great mirror of the other not only reflects
the conflicts of class and nation and race, but serves to ex-
pand the scale and increase the intensity of these conflicts.

An adequate study of these conflicts, as they are reflected in
the current struggle for control of the microphone, would
require a book in itself. We have space here only for a brief
description of what happens when education and the arts en-
counter business-as-usual as represented by the "American
system of broadcasting."

The records of the Federal Radio Commission show that in
May, 1927, when the present radio law went into effect, there
was a total of 94 educational institutions licensed to broad-
cast. By March, 1931, the number had been reduced to 49.
According to the National Committee on Education by Radio,
23 educational broadcasting stations were forced to close their
doors between January i and August i, 1930. At present,
out of a total of 400 units available to the United States,
educational stations occupy only 23.16 units, or one-sixteenth
of the available frequencies. In short, educators and educa-
tional institutions which desire to make independent use of
the radio as an educational instrumentality are facing strangu-
lation. They must either fight or acquiesce in the present
trend, which, if continued, will give the commercial broad-
casters complete control of the air the educators being in-
vited to feed the Great Radio Audience such education as the
commercial stations consider worth broadcasting, at hours
which do not conflict with the vested interests of tooth-
pastes and automobile tires or with the careers of such estab-
lished radio personalities as Amos J n' Andy, Phil Cook and
Lady Esther.

The militant wing of the educators has chosen to fight
and was organized as the National Committee for Education

271

by Radio. Represented on the committee are the National
Education Association, the National Council of State Super-
intendents, the National Association of State Universities,
the Association of College and University Broadcasting Sta-
tions, the National University Extension Association, the
National Catholic Educational Association, the American
Council on Education, the Jesuit Education Association and
the Association of Land Grant Colleges and Universities. Joy
Elmer Morgan, editor of the Journal of the National Educa-
tion, is chairman of this committee. Its work is financed by
the Payne Fund.

Let us turn now to the battalions of the opposition by
which these educational militants are confronted. On June
i, 1931, there were in the United States 609 licensed stations
divided in a ratio of one to sixteen between the education
and the commercial broadcasters. The strongest of the latter
group are affiliated in two great chains with the National
Broadcasting Company and the Columbia Broadcasting Com-
pany. N. B. C. is a one-hundred per cent owned subsidiary
of the Radio Corporation of America, which manufactures
radio equipment and pools the patents of General Electric,
Westinghouse and American Telephone and Telegraph. Ob-
viously the educational militants are facing a closely affiliated
group representing the dominant power and communications
interests of America. N. B. C. and Columbia represent big
business, and what does big business care for education and
culture? But big business cares a great deal, insist the com-
mercial broadcasters, citing their cultural sustaining programs
and their repeated offers of free time on the air to educators.
There is, in fact, a group of educators who have accepted the
existing commercial set-up of broadcasting to the extent at
least of working with it and through it. They too are or-
ganized. The National Advisory Council on Radio in Educa-
tion is financed jointly by John D. Rockefeller Jr. and the
Carnegie Corporation. Its president is Dr. Robert A. Millikan

272

and its vice president is Dr. Livingston Farrand, President of
Cornell University.

Two years ago the educational militants were engaged in
propaganda for the Fess Bill, which would have assigned 15
per cent of the broadcast band to educational broadcasting by
educational stations. Latterly they have turned more and
more to the demand for congressional investigation of radio
with the hope that a congressional committee would recom-
mend government ownership and operation of radio facilities
as in England and more recently in Canada. The conservatives,
as represented by the National Council on Radio in Education,
abstain entirely from political propaganda and lobbying. The
objectives of the council, as stated in its constitution, em-
phasize fact-finding and fact-dissemination; it undertakes to
"mobilize the best educational thought of the country to de-
vise, develop and sponsor suitable programs, to be brought
into fruitful contact with the most appropriate facilities in
order that eventually the council may be recognized as the
mouthpiece of American education in respect to educational
broadcasting." Officially it still suspends judgment on the
question of private versus public ownership and operation of
broadcasting facilities, remarking that, "as yet no one is pre-
pared or competent to say whether or not this [the announced
educational program of the council] will eventually force the
council to discuss the mechanisms necessary for educational
broadcasting and whether their ownership should be in com-
mercial hands, in the hands of educational institutions, or in
the hands of non-profit co-operative federations, or perhaps in
all." That statement was written four years ago and the coun-
cil is still busy "finding the facts" by rigorously "objective"
scientific procedures, meanwhile sponsoring politically innocu-
ous educational broadcasts on free time contributed by the
commercial chains.

In May, 1933, the National Council on Radio in Education
held its annual assembly. The Director of the Council, Mr.

Levering Tyson, delivered a report discussing various activi-
ties in broadcasting, research and publication and urged the
establishment of a National Radio Institute. The writer par-
ticipated in the discussion of this report and of the prepared
speeches which followed it, which are published in Kadio in
Education, 1933. I was frankly puzzled by the attitude of
the educators as revealed at this conference.

In this view business, including the business of selling tooth-
pastes, laxatives, stocks and bonds, etc., by radio is assumed
not to be educative. The advertisers' sales talks (doctrinal
memoranda in the Veblenian terminology) and the jazz,
vaudeville and other entertainment by which they are made
more palatable all this is assumed not to be educative. But
obviously this business expresses the central acquisitive drive
of the culture. Obviously it influences the lives of the radio
listeners infinitely more than the relatively microscopic
amount of "education" which the council had been able to
put on the air more in all probability than the total out-
put of American class rooms and lecture platforms. Yet, by
definition, it is not "education," which is conceived of as a
meliorative something added to a secular process which may
be profoundly diseducational in that it contradicts and op-
poses at practically every point the attitudes and ideals of the
educator.

In arguing for a more realistic and more vital conception of
the educational function the writer pointed out that the end
result of American commercial broadcasting, as we have it, is
demonstrably diseducational; that radio advertisers are not
interested in educating the great radio audience in any true
sense. What really happens is that the advertisers are in-
terested solely in promoting the sale of products and services.
Hence they tend to exploit the cultural inadequacies of the
radio audience and its moral, ethical and psychological help-
lessness.

At this meeting, Mr. Henry Adams Bellows, LL.D., vice

274

president of the Columbia Broadcasting Company, made the
usual formal offer of free time on the air to the assembled
educators. At the moment it happened that a group of Corr
munist -fellow-travelers," organized as the League of Pro-
fessional Groups, was conducting a series of public lectures
under the general title "Culture and Capitalism."
ices of this group, which included some well-known teach-
ers and writers, were offered without charge to Mr. Bellows
but, as might have been expected, these radicals clamored i
vain for "the freedom of the air."

The issue of censorship was again raised at this meeting
after Mr. Hector Charlesworth, chairman of the Canadian
Broadcasting Commission, had declared that Communists and
communist sympathizers were permitted on the air in Can-
ada. The position of the American commercial broadcasters,
as stated repeatedly by Mr. Bellows and others, is that the
American system provides more effective freedom for minor-
ity groups than the system of government ownership as oper-
ated in England and in a more modified form in Canada. The
contention, of course, finds little support in the experience
of Communists and others who recurrently make application
in vain to the educational directors of the major chains.

It is difficult to write about the problem of radio censor-
ship since all our eighteenth century concepts of "freedom"
are quite evidently made obsolete by the technical nature of
the instrumentality. Some form of censorship and some form
of international control is necessary. The domestic problem is
simplified under a political dictatorship. Both Mussolini and
Hitler promptly seized complete control of radio upon as-
suming power and used it to consolidate and extend their
rule. At the moment Hitler's use of radio, which knows no
political boundaries, is perhaps his strongest weapon in his
struggle to bring Austria under the Nazi hegemony. It is
safe to predict that in the next great war, radio will constitute

a major offensive weapon, second only in effectiveness to the
airplane.

Meanwhile, in America, the confusion brought about by
our various and sundry forms of censorship, both overt and
concealed, is almost indescribable. Miss Lillian Hurwitz, in a
study of radio censorship prepared for the American Civil
Liberties Union, has no difficulty in showing that despite the
prohibition of censorship embodied in our present radio law,
The Federal Radio Commission "has so construed the stand-
ard of public interest, convenience and necessity as to enable
it to exercise an indirect censorship over station programs."
The very assignment and withdrawal of radio licenses by the
commission involves an indirect censorship.

Meanwhile, as Miss Hurwitz abundantly proves, the sta-
tions themselves are obliged to operate a systematic censor-
ship, if only to protect themselves against libel suits. They go
much further than that, of course. They not only impose their
own conception of the "public interest, convenience and neces-
sity" but their own standards of taste, morals and political
orthodoxy. They protect their own source of revenue by
forbidding radio lecturers to attack radio advertising. When
Mr. F. J. Schlink, director of Consumers' Research, addressed
the American Academy of Political and Social Science on the
subject of the New Deal as it affects the consumer he was
cut off the air by the Columbia Broadcasting Company. Only
after the issue was publicly posed by the resulting newspaper
publicity, was he permitted a week later to make the same
speech over Columbia facilities.

What will emerge from this welter of technical and com-
mercial necessities and political make-believe is quite im-
possible to predict. Proposals to unify all communications
services under a single government control are now before
Congress with the President's endorsement. A non-partisan
investigation of the broadcasting system has been repeatedly
urged and something of the sort is probably imminent.

276

Meanwhile, however, it should be pointed out that a tight-
ened control of the American Telegraph and Telephone Com-
pany would perhaps put the government in a position to audit
the wire charges which constitute a heavy proportion of the
overhead of the broadcasting chains. It has been widely as-
serted that these charges are excessive; that both the techni-
cal and economic problems of broadcasting could be solved
by a combination of "wire and wax." By "wax" is meant wax
records which have been so perfected that an electrical tran-
scription is now practically indistinguishable from an original
studio broadcast. By "wire" is meant wire chain hookups, the
present cost of which is at present almost prohibitive except
for the two major chains. Then also there is an assortment
of more or less known technical potentialities, such as wired
radio, short wave and micro-wave broadcasting and tele-
vision, although the latter, according to competent technicians,
is at present to be classified as a stock-market development
rather than an electronic development. Taken together these
various potentialities make impossible any clear anticipation of
what is likely to happen. With this exception however: the
trend of both technical and economic developments point to
the need of centralized control. This will be particularly true
if the Roosevelt Administration is forced, by the failure of
the NRA to increase buying power, to go left in the direction
of a functional reorganization of distribution. As we shall
see later, when we come to discuss the NRA program with
respect to advertising, this cannot be accomplished without
a huge deflation of the advertising business, affecting both the
press and the commercial broadcasters.

A significant factor in the situation is, of course, Mr.
Roosevelt's immensely skillful and successful use of radio in
building public support for his administration. On the whole,
it would seem only a matter of time when Mr. Roosevelt, or
whoever succeeds him, will be obliged to say to radio broad-
casting, "You're mine! I need you to help me rule!" A faint

intimation of this rather probable development appears in the
speech of Federal Radio Commissioner Harold A. LaFount at
the 1933 Assembly of the National Council on Radio in
Education already referred to. Commissioner LaFount said:

Educational programs could, and I believe in the near future
will, be broadcast by the Government itself over a few powerful
short-wave stations and rebroadcast by existing stations. This
would not interfere with local educational programs, and would
provide all broadcasters with the finest possible sustaining pro-
grams. The whole nation would be taught by one teacher instead
of hundreds, and would be thinking together on one subject of
national importance. Personally I believe such a plan would be
more effective than a standing army.

The commissioner, who in view of his record, can scarcely
be accused of being unfriendly to the commercial broad-
casters, was probably innocent of dictatorial ideas. Yet his
language is, to say the least, suggestive.

A more detailed discussion of the problem of radio is contained
in the writer's pamphlet "Order on the Air!" published by the
John Day Company.

278

CHAPTER

18

RELIGION AND THE AD-MAN

WEEKS before real beer came back, the beer gardens sprang
into bloom along Fourteenth Street. They are cheap. Fifteen
cents buys a roast beef sandwich, a portion of beans, a por-
tion of potatoes and a slop of thin gravy. You sit at an
enamel table, look and listen. Imitation tile. Imitation Alps.
Imitation Bavarian atmosphere. Imitation beer. Three people
sit at the next table: an imitation pimp, an imitation stage
mother and an imitation burlesque show manager. Maybe the
burlesque show manager is real. He is gray-haired, red-faced,
thickset and voluble. He declaims:

"I'm a faker. God in his blue canopy above that's out of
Shakespeare God knows I'm a faker. When the priest bap-
tized me, he shook the holy water on my head (snap, snap)
and said: Taker, faker, faker!' "

I saw that. I heard that. If I had sat there long enough I
am confident I could have seen and heard anything. If one
wishes to discover America, all one has to do is to forget all
the solemn and reasonable things that solemn and reasonable
people have spoken and written, and then go listening and
pondering into cheap restaurants, movie palaces, radio studios,
pulp magazine offices, police stations, five- and ten-cent
stores, advertising agencies. Out of this atomic, pulverized
life, the anarchic voices rise. They are shameless, these voices,
and truthful, and wise with a kind of bleak factual wisdom.
Each atom speaks for itself, to comfort itself, to assert itself

279

against the overwhelming nothingness of all the other atoms:
each atom sending out an infinitesimal ray of force, search-
ing for some infinite reason, and protesting obstinately against
some infinite betrayal.

Fake. Baloney. Bunk. Apple sauce. Bull. There are over a
hundred slang synonyms for the idea which these words ex-
press, most of them coined within the last two decades. No
other idea has called forth such lavish folk invention, and
this can mean only one thing. It is the pseudoculture's bleak
judgment upon itself. It is possible for an inhuman society to
pulverize humanity, but the human essence is indestructible.
It is meek, or it is bitter; it remains human, truthful and es-
sentially moral, even religious.

What is religion, if it is not the framework of instinctively
felt values of truth and beauty and honor by which the race
lives if it is to live? Reverse these thin worn coins of the
folk argot bunk, baloney, etc. and you find the true cur-
rency of the human exchange. Honoring truth, the burlesque
comedian pauses in his exit, shakes his rear and says: "Horse-
feathers!"

But what we are concerned with here is not the deep
human core of the religious spirit, but the make-believe
against which these atomic voices are crying out: the fake re-
ligion, the moral, ethical and spiritual make-believe of the
acquisitive society, of the ad-man's pseudoculture. If the
inquiry were to be in any degree systematic and exhaustive,
it would lead us far back in time, back to the medieval syn-
thesis of church and state and its breakup by those Knights
Templar of the rising trading class, John Calvin and Martin
Luther.

There are plenty of able and informed advertising men,
and some of them know this. Yesterday I was in the research
department of a large agency gathering certain statistical
data. A former associate paused, greeted me and we fell into
conversation. Knowing me, he guessed what I was doing in

280

fact I had never at any time tried to conceal anything and,
helpfully, he offered his own explanations. He blamed Martin
Luther. For the long sequence of cultural disintegration, cli-
maxed in our time by the paradox of mass production and
mass starvation and by the development of the advertising
agency as a mass producer of f akery, human stultification and
confusion, he blamed Martin Luther.

This man started life as a traveling salesman. He never
went to college, so that his mind remained fresh and avid, if
cynical. And he had known great charlatans in his time no-
tably Elbert Hubbard. He understood them very well, and,
being of a speculative turn, he had checked up on their ori-
gins. He blamed Martin Luther. He was greatly interested
when I told him that the famous German scholar, Max
Weber, author of The Protestant Ethic, also blamed Martin
Luther a little, but John Calvin a great deal more.

My friend had only a few minutes for gossip, however. He
had to get back to his desk and read proof on a new tooth-
paste campaign in which, by a trick of pragmatic self-
hypnosis, he had come to believe fervently. When he had
finished he would placidly stroll to the station, buy a paper,
and solve a cross-word puzzle en route to White Plains and
his comfortable and charming suburban family.

While somewhat exceptional, this man is far from being a
unique figure in the business. To those atomic voices heard
above the clatter of dishes in the Fourteenth Street beer gar-
dens, we must add the voices of the speakeasy philosophers
of the Grand Central district advertising men, many of
them, college men and more or less self-conscious fakers. God
in his blue canopy above knows they're fakers, but it is per-
haps somewhat to their credit that they know it too.

In discussing religion and the ad-man we are not concerned

281

with the sales publicity of the churches. There are plenty of
texts on the subject. What concerns us is the extent to which
the culture of our acquisitive society, as represented and
publicized by the ad-man, has become a rival of the Christian
culture, represented by the Protestant and Catholic Churches
of the United States.

Since it is our purpose to compare these two cultures, it
may be useful to note what social scientists think culture and
religion are. Culture may be defined as the total social en-
vironment into which the individual is born; religion is a
behavior pattern which seeks to dominate the culture. As
sociological phenomena, religion, nationalism and radicalism,
although dissimilar in many respects, are categorically the
same. The sociologist would note the similarities between re-
ligions, nationalism and radicalism, by calling them all be-
havior patterns. The layman would call them religions. The
name is not important. What is important is the fact that
they have common characteristics.

Each of these religions has an inclusive pattern for human
life and society. Each of them would prefer to be dominant
and to exclude other behavior patterns from the scene. Wit-
ness Russia and the Christian Churches, or Nazi Germany
and the Socialist and Communist Parties. As a practical mat-
ter behavior patterns do succeed in living side by side, but
though the competition may not be overt, it is present.
Every behavior pattern has to be sold, more or less, continu-
ously, to the public. This is true, as the anthropologist, Ma-
linowski, has pointed out, even among primitive peoples. He
says: "The reign of custom in a savage society is a complex
and variegated matter just as it is in a more civilized society.
Some customs are very lightly broken; others are regarded as
mandatory." The more effective techniques used in selling the
public a behavior pattern may be considered techniques of
rule. Religious rituals belong in this category; so do the
publicity engines of Mussolini, and of Hitler. No proper

282

perspective can be gained in relation to such behavior pat-
terns as religion, nationalism and radicalism, unless one real-
izes that they are highly important in relation to group sur-
vival. As Bagehot has said: "Any polity is more efficient than
none." But the more shrewd and complete the polity, the more
efficient an instrument it is in the struggle for survival.

There are certain interesting parallelisms between the tech-
niques of persuasion and admonition used in religious rituals
and those used in contemporary advertising. Jane Harrison,
the distinguished student of Greek religions, notes that ritual
in its beginnings has two elements: the dromenon, something
which is done, and the legomenon, something which is said. In
the beginning, the words of the ritual, according, to Miss
Harrison, may have consisted of "no more than the excited
repetition of one syllable." The action of the ritual is some-
thing that is "re-done, commemorative, or predone, anticipa-
tory, and both elements seem to go to its religiousness." The
points at which the techniques of religious ritual and adver-
tising correspond are the following: In both instances, there
is repetition. In both instances the symbols used in the ritual,
or the ad, have the same meaning to the audience. A symbol,
which always has the same meaning, is called by Durkheim,
"a collective representation." A number of social scientists
have pointed out that the Utopias of the radicals become com-
prehensible if one realizes that they serve as collective repre-
sentations. In advertising, the name of the product, the
slogan, the packaging and the trade-mark, are obviously used
as collective representations.

The net result of religious ritual is to leave the participants
in a religious ceremony more restless than soothed, simmering
gently, or boiling violently as the case may be, in an im-
pressionable, emotional state, which cannot find complete re-
lease in immediate action. (Note the ritualistic function of the
movies already described as a want-building adjunct of the
advertising business.) While the audience is in this impression-

283

able state, the minister or priest makes strong persuasive or
admonitory suggestions in regard to the action which the
individual should take in the future. In advertising, the ad-
monitory or persuasive voices of the priesthood are also
present.

The close analogy between the sales publicity methods of
the Christian Church and those of the modern Church of
Advertising was noted in 1923 by Thorstein Veblen, who
missed little, if any, of the comedy of the American scene.
Veblen'slong foot-note (p. 319, Absentee Ownership) should
be read in its entirety in this connection. It is particularly
interesting as showing the rapid movement of forces during
the intervening decade.

The Propagation of the Faith is quite the largest, oldest, most
magnificent, most unabashed, and most lucrative enterprise in
sales-publicity in all Christendom. Much is to be learned from it
as regards media and suitable methods of approach, as well as due
perseverance, tact, and effrontery. By contrast, the many secular
adventures in salesmanship are no better than upstarts, raw recruits,
late and slender capitalizations out of the ample fund of human
credulity. It is only quite recently, and even yet only with a dawn-
ing realization of what may be achieved by consummate effrontery
in the long run, that these others are beginning to take on any-
thing like the same air of stately benevolence and menacing solem-
nity. No pronouncement on rubber-heels, soap-powders, lip-sticks,
or yeast-cakes, not even Sapphira Buncombe's Vegetative Compound,
are yet able to ignore material facts with the same magisterial de-
tachment, and none has yet commanded the same unreasoning assent
or acclamation. None other has achieved that pitch of unabated
assurance which has enabled the publicity-agents of the Faith to
debar human reason from scrutinizing their pronouncements. These
others are doing well enough, do doubt; perhaps as well as might
reasonably be expected under the circumstances, but they are a
feeble thing in comparison. "Saul has slain his thousands," perhaps,
"but David has slain his tens of thousands."

284

Within a year after this footnote was written, Mr. Bruce
Barton published The Man Nobody Knows, in which the life
and works of the Saviour are assimilated into the body of
the ad-man's doctrine, and in which the very physical linea-
ments of the traditional Christ begin to take on a family
resemblance to those of the modern ad-man, so excellently
typified by Mr. Barton himself. The discussion of this brilliant
job of rationalization must be reserved for a later chapter.
At this point it is sufficient to observe that today Veblen's
ironic patronage of the emerging priesthood of advertising
sounds astonishingly inept and dated. For it may well be
contended that today the Propagation of the Faith is rela-
tively nowhere, while the religion of the ad-man is everywhere
dominant both as to prestige and in the matter of administra-
tive control. Granted that both religions are decadent, since
the underlying exploitative system which both support is it-
self disintegrating by reason of its internal contradictions;
none the less, the ad-man's religion is today the prevailing
American religion, and the true heretic must therefore con-
centrate upon this modern aspect of priestcraft. The ancient
Propagation of the Faith continues, of course, sometimes in
more or less collusive alliance with the Church of Advertising,
sometimes in jealous and recalcitrant opposition. We can give
little space to the quarrels and intrigues of these competing
courtiers at the High Court of Business. Clearly the present
favorite is advertising, and we turn now to a brief resume
of the historic process by which the priesthood of ballyhoo
attained this high estate.

Starting, as any discussion of the economic and ideological
evolution of modern industrial capitalism must start, with
the breakup of the medieval church-state synthesis, we note
that the Christian feudalism of the Middle Ages did not live

285

by buying and selling. As John Strachey puts it in The Com-
ing Struggle for Power, "what Western man accomplished by
some four hundred years of struggle, between the fifteenth
and the nineteenth centuries, was the establishment of the
free market." The development of monopoly capitalism in
the modern period qualified this ' "freedom" of course; it
also intensified the fundamental contradictions of capitalism,
and sharpened the ethical dilemma which is concisely stated
by the conservative philosopher, James Hayden Tufts, in his
American Social Morality:

The impersonal corporation formed for profit represents in clear-
est degree this separation of the modern conduct of commerce and
industry from all control by religious authority and by the moral
standards and restraints grounded in the older professedly personal
relations of man to man in kinship, neighborhood or civic com-
munity. . . . To turn over all standards to the market was to lay
a foundation for future conflicts unless the market should provide
some substitute for the older standards when man dealt with his
fellow and faced the consequences of his dealing.

The market did provide such a substitute, of course a fake
substitute. It provided the religion of advertising and devel-
oped the forms and controls of the ad -man's pseudoculture.

It is this utilitarian faker y with which we are here con-
cerned, rather than with the economic and political conquests
of the trading class. We are concerned with the ideological and
religious rationalizations by which these conquests were both
implemented and justified. My former advertising colleague
who blamed this long history of serio-comic rationalization
on Martin Luther would seem to be somewhat in error, just
as Max Weber probably overemphasizes the role of the Prot-
estant Ethic, the Calvinistic doctrine of "justification by
works."

In Weber's view the Calvinistic doctrine of worldly suc-

286

cess in a "calling" as a means of winning divine favor con-
stituted a necessary theological counterpart of capitalism;
without such reinforcement of the normal lust for gain, he
argues, the extraordinary conquests of capitalism in England
and in America would have been impossible. Calvinism recon-
ciled piety and money-making; in fact the pursuit of riches,
which in the medieval church ethic had been feared as the
enemy of religion, was now welcomed as its ally. It is impor-
tant to note, as does Tawney in his introduction to Weber's
great essay, that the habits and institutions in which this phi-
losophy found expression survived long after the creed which
was their parent had practically expired. So that, quoting
Tawney, "if capitalism begins as the practical idealism of the
aspiring bourgeoisie, it ends ... as an orgy of materialism."
An orgy is an irrational affair. To the writer, the most
interesting and suggestive aspect of Weber's interpretation, as
applied to the contemporary phenomena of the ad-man's
pseudoculture, is this divorcing of the acquisitive drive from
any control by hedonistic rationality. The pursuit of wealth,
for the Calvinistic entrepreneur, was not merely an advan-
tage, but a duty. And this sense of duty persisted long after
the Calvinistic sanctions had ceased to be operative. Money-
making for money-making's-sake, like art-for-art's-sake, sup-
plied its own sanctions. Both are self-contained disciplines,
fields for the display of an irrational and sterile virtuosity.
Weber, in the concluding pages of his essay, sets forth this
consummation with moving eloquence:

In the field of its highest development, in the United States, the
pursuit of wealth, stripped of its religious and ethical meaning,
tends to become associated with purely mundane passions, which
often give the character of sport. (The advertising "game." J. R.)

No one knows who will live in this cage in the future, or whether
at the end of this tremendous development entirely new prophets
will arise, or there will be a great rebirth of old ideas and ideals,

287

or, if neither, mechanized petrifaction, embellished with a sort of
convulsive self-importance. For of the last stage of this cultural
development, it might well be truly said: "Specialists without spirit,
sensualists without heart; this nullity imagines that it has at-
tained a level of civilization never before achieved."

But note that this was written in 1905. What Weber saw
with horror was not "the last stage," but the next-to-the-last
stage perhaps not even that. The cage was kept spinning, not
merely by its accumulated momentum, but by the organized
application, on a tremendous scale, of the great force of
emulation. Ten years before Max Weber wrote the paragraph
quoted, Thorstein Veblen had written The Theory of the
Leisure Class, which gave currency to his fertile concepts of
"vicarious expenditure," "conspicuous waste," etc. These con-
cepts, all revolving about the central motivation of emula-
tion, are the stock-in-trade of the modern advertising copy
writer.

New prophets did arise in America Elbert Hubbard for
one, Bruce Barton for another. America entered upon the
"surplus economy" phase of industrial capitalism, and the
appropriate religion for this period, which was interrupted,
but also accelerated by the war, was the religion of advertis-
ing, which did not reach full maturity until after the war. The
motion picture industry came along as an important adjunct
of the emulative promotion machinery, used as such both at
home, and as an "ideological export," to further the conquests
of American imperialism in "backward" countries. Peering
out of the vistas ahead were radio and television.

Seeing all this, Theodore Dreiser seized upon the great theme
of emulation keeping up with the Joneses and wrote The
American Tragedy. And Carl Sandburg wrote, almost as a
kind of sad ironic parody of Weber: "This is the greatest city
of the greatest country that ever, ever was." And the cage
spun faster than ever. And Robert Frost wrote West Running

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Brook, in which he symbolizes western culture as a stream dis-
appearing in the barren soil of the American acquisitive cul-
ture. And Robinson Jeffers wrote:

Man, introverted man, having crossed

In passage and but a little with the nature of things this latter

century

Has begot giants; but being taken up

Like a maniac with self love and inward conflicts cannot manage his

hybrids.

Being used to deal with edgeless dreams,

Now he's bred knives on nature turns them also inward; they have

thirty points, though.
His mind forebodes his own destruction;

Actacon who saw the goddess naked among the leaves and his hounds

tore him.

A little knowledge, a pebble from the shingle,
A drop from the oceans; who would have dreamed this infinitely

little too much?

When he wrote this, as a kind of an advance obituary of
industrial capitalism, Jeifers was an unknown recluse on the
coast of California, and the book in which it appeared was
printed at his own expense. But that same year the presses
rolled out the four millionth copy of Elbert Hubbard's Mes-
sage to Garcia, in which the big business cracks the whip over
the modern office wage slave.

The cage spun faster still. On an August midnight in
Union Square, New York, a banner was flung out of the
Freiheit office reading "Vanzetti Murdered!" and, in the words
of the New York World's reporter:

The crowd responded with a giant sob. Women fainted in fifteen
or twenty places. Others too, overcome, dropped to the curbs and
buried their heads in their hands. Men leaned on one another's
shoulders and wept. There was a sudden movement in the street

289

to the east of the Square. Men began running around aimlessly,
tearing at their clothes, and dropping their straw hats, and women
ripped their dresses in anguish.

Thus the State of Massachusetts was killing the God in
man. But Bruce Barton still lived, and, having written The
Man Nobody Knows, went on to write The Book Nobody
Knows, and On the Up and Up.

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CHAPTER

19

EVOLUTION OF THE AMERICAN HERO

THE emergence of organized and incorporated salesmanship
as the characteristic phenomenon of the American society, the
transmigration of the soul of the Fourth Estate into the
material body of the advertising business these developments
can be viewed as logical sequences in the evolution of indus-
trial capitalism; they can also be studied as the end products
of a social philosophy. In this chapter we shall attempt to
outline the ideological evolution as it appears in the life and
works of significant American personalities. Benjamin Frank-
lin, Jay Cooke, P. T. Barnum, Henry Ward Beecher, Elbert
Hubbard, Bruce Barton: what these men thought and did
and said was doubtless determined largely by the economic
environment in which they rose to power and influence. But
their attitudes, acts and utterances served to rationalize and
thereby to promote the material evolution, in the study of
which the economist specializes. What we look for, in the
evidence of these lives, is the religion of salesmanship which
became more and more, after the turn of the century, the
religion of advertising. What we find is a kind of sequence
of crowd heroes, each modeling himself more or less on the
ones preceding. They are middle-class heroes, all of them,
and the crown and glory of the towering structure of ration-
alization which they erected is the identification of the Christ
mission with the mission of the middle-class salesman and
advertising man, which was accomplished by Mr. Barton in

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The Man Nobody Knows.

Even today the masthead of the Saturday Evening Post
bears the proud statement "Founded by Benjamin Franklin."
The statement is true in spirit if not in fact. The Saturday
Evening Post is the most influential advertising medium in
America in the world for that matter. And the social and
political philosophy of its publisher derives clearly from the
sly wisdom of that ineffable parvenu, that Yankee all-right-
nick of genius who signed himself "Poor Richard." Franklin
serves as a point of departure because he was a business-minded
pragmatist. He was not a Babbitt and it is impossible to con-
ceive of Franklin, a man of genius, playing the role of a Hub-
bard or a Barton a century later. But on the other hand it
seems fair to credit Franklin with laying the ground-work
of the American acquisitive ethic.

BENJAMIN FRANKLIN

"Remember, that time is money . . . Remember, that
credit is money. If a man lets money be on my hands after
it is due, he gives me the interest, or so much as I can make
of it during that time. Remember, that money is of the
prolific, generating nature. Money can beget money, and its
offspring can beget more, and so on. Remember this saying,
r the good paymaster is lord of another man's purse.' He
that is known to pay punctually and exactly to the time he
promises may at any time and on any occasion raise all the
money his friends can spare . . . The most trifling actions
that affect a man's credit are to be regarded. The sound of
your hammer at five in the morning or eight at night, heard
by a creditor, makes him easy six months longer; but if he
sees you at a billiard table or hears your voice at a tavern,
when you should be at work, he sends for his money the
next day."

Remember, remember. Remember, in the matter of sex,

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its utilitarian aspect; sexualize to promote health or for the
sober procreation of children; "do not marry for money, but
marry where money is." If as a young man you cannot afford
to marry, choose your mistress wisely, preferably an older
woman, since a pretty face adds nothing of utility or sub-
stantial enjoyment to the transaction and moreover the older
women are so grateful."

Franklin was careful to be good because, honesty being the
best policy, it paid him to be good. And when he was not
careful to be good, he was careful to be careful.

"I grew convinced that truth, sincerity and integrity in
dealings between man and man were of the utmost impor-
tance to the felicity of life . . . Revelation had indeed no
weight with me as such; but I entertained an opinion that,
though certain actions might not be bad because they were
forbidden by it, or good because it commanded them, yet
probably those actions might be forbidden because they were
bad for us, or commanded because they were beneficial to
us in their own nature, all the circumstances of things con-
sidered."

The utilitarian point of view could scarcely be made more
explicit. But Franklin achieved a further logical extension of
the utilitarian philosophy, to which Weber calls attention in
"The Protestant Ethic."

"Now, all Franklin's moral attitudes are colored with utili-
tarianisms. Honesty is useful, because it assures credit; so are
punctuality, industry, frugality, and that is the reason they
are virtues. A logical deduction from this would be that
where, for instance, the appearance of honesty serves the same
purpose, that would suffice, and an unnecessary surplus of this
virtue would evidently appear to Franklin's eyes as unpro-
ductive waste. And as a matter of fact, the story in his auto-
biography of his conversion to those virtues, or the discus-
sion of the value of a strict maintenance of the appearance of

modesty, the assiduous belittlement of one's own desserts in
order to gain general recognition later, confirms this impres-
sion. According to Franklin, those virtues, like all others, are
only in so far virtues as they are actually useful to the indi-
vidual, and the surrogate of mere appearances is always suf-
ficient when it accomplishes the end in view. It is a conclusion
which is inevitable for strict utilitarianism."

Compare this accurate characterization of Poor Richard's
credo with the attitude of the manufacturers of Creomulsion,
a proprietary remedy, expressed in a form letter designed to
coerce newspaper publishers into attacking the Tugwell Pure
Food and Drugs Bill:

Gentlemen: You are about to lose a substantial amount of adver-
tising revenue from food, drug, and cosmetic manufacturers. Your
pocketbook is about to be filched and you will see how if you will
personally study ... the enclosed copy of the Tugwell Bill. This
bill was introduced by two doctors. . . . You publish your paper for
profit and as a service to your community. In most virile business
organizations the altruistic policies in the final analysis are means to
the primary end which is profit. (My italics J. R.) ... An isolated
editorial or two will not suffice. . . . You need to take an aggressive
stand against this measure. You need to bring all personal pressure
you can upon your senators and representatives. You need to en-
lighten and thereby arouse your public against this bill which is
calculated to greatly restrict personal rights. If this bill should
become law we will be forced to cancel immediately every line
of Creomulsion advertising. . . .

Surely the italicized sentence expresses the essence of the
Poor Richard Philosophy and shows that the wisdom of
Benjamin Franklin still lives in the hearts and minds of his
countrymen, especially those who, like the manufacturers of
Creomulsion, are engaged in manipulating the techniques of
rule by advertising.

294

JAY COOKE

Vernon L. Parrington, in the third volume of his Main
Currents of American Thought, remarks that "in certain re-
spects Jay Cooke may be reckoned the first modern Ameri-
can." He financed the Civil War, and in the course of his
operations developed and used on the grand scale most of the
techniques of the modern advertiser and mass propagandist.
With the Liberty Loan drives in mind, compare Parrington's
summary of Cooke's pioneering achievements.

Under his bland deacon-like exterior was the mind of a realist.
... If he were to lure dollars from old stockings in remote chim-
ney corners he must "sell" patriotism to his fellow Americans; and
to do that successfully he must manufacture a militant public opin-
ion. The soldier at the front, he announced in a flood of adver-
tisements, must be supported at the rear. . . . To induce slacker
dollars to become fighting dollars he placed his agents in every
neighborhood, in newspaper offices, in banks, in pulpits patriotic
forerunners of the "one-minute men" of later drives. . . . He sub-
sidized the press with a lavish hand, not only the metropolitan
dailies but the obscurist country weeklies. He employed an army of
hack-writers to prepare syndicated matter and he scattered paying
copy broadcast. . . . He bought the pressings of whole vineyards
and casks of pure wine flowed in an endless stream to strategic
publicity points. Rival brokers hinted that he was debauching the
press, but the army of greenbacks marching to the front was his
reply. It all cost a pretty penny, but the government was liberal
with commissions and when all expenses were deducted perhaps
$2,000,000 of profits remained in the vaults of the firm to be added
to the many other millions which the prestige of the government
agency with its free advertising brought in its train.

Having successfully sold a war, Jay Cooke turned to sell-
ing railroad stock specifically, the Northern Pacific. He
kept much of his war publicity machine intact and used it

both for this purpose and to shape public opinion in regard to
taxation funding, and the currency naturally in his own
interests. But the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War smashed
Cooke's European bond-selling campaign and the fall of the
house of Cooke precipitated the panic of '73.

Jay Cooke carried into the realm of national finance and
politics the morals, ethics and philosophy of a frontier trader
and real estate speculator. Profoundly ignorant of social or
economic principles he wrote or had written for him con-
tributions to economic theory which were little more than
clumsy and transparent rationalizations of a money lender's
greed. But he was successful in amassing great wealth; hence
he was, during his heyday, a popular hero whose opinions on
any subject were listened to with great respect by his fellow
Americans. Moreover, he was, as Parrington noted: "Scrupu-
lous in all religious duties, a kind husband, a generous friend,
benevolent in all worthy charities, simple and democratic in
his tastes, ardently patriotic." As a man, he seems to have
had neither blood nor brains Franklin had both but in his
life and work he applied the middle-class virtues of Poor
Richard to the acquisitive opportunities of the Gilded Age. So
that to a people given over to the worship of money-progress
and money-opportunity he was a kind of Moses, envied and
revered in life by all classes and worshipped by his biographer.

In brief, he was a mean and sorry little parvenu; and one
of the founding fathers of the religion of salesmanship and
advertising. His career marks a step in the evolution of the
American crowd hero, and in the evolution of the American
pseudoculture.

P. T. BARNUM

Salesmanship and showmanship are variants of the same
technique and both find their sanctions in Franklin's utili-
tarian ethic. America's greatest showman belongs in the his-

296

torical sequence of American crowd heroes for a number of
reasons. In him the doctrine of justification by works re-
ceives its extreme pragmatic application in "the people like to
be fooled" and "there is a sucker born every minute." That
this greasy faker, this vulgar horse-trading yokel could have
successfully worn the cloak of piety all his life; that his
autobiography, the prototype of the American success story,
was for years an unrivaled best seller, standing alongside of
Franklin's Autobiography and Pilgrim's Progress in many
thousands of American homes; that he was, for multitudes
of his fellow citizens a model American all this is difficult
to believe at this distance. Yet his biographer, M. R. Werner,
supplies impressive evidence that it was so.

When you give one of your daughters away in matrimony, advise
her to imitate Charity Barnum; when your son leaves home to try
his luck on the ocean of life, give him Barnum for a guide; when
you yourself are in trouble and misery and near desperation, take
from Barnum's life and teachings consolation and courage.

Henry Hilgert, a Baltimore preacher, stood up in his pulpit
and said this to his congregation and there is every reason to
believe that he expressed with substantial accuracy the con-
temporary popular evaluation of the great showman. The man
he was talking about started his career in a country store
in Bethel, Connecticut, watering the rum, sanding the sugar
and dusting the pepper that he sold to his fellow townsmen,
cheating and being cheated, playing cruel practical jokes, all
strictly in accordance with the savage mores of that idyllic
New England community, where the public whipping post
menaced the ungodly arid suicides were buried at the cross-
roads. From this he advanced to running a public lottery and
with the profits went to New York, where the advertising of
Dr. Brandeth's Pills was helping James Gordon Bennett to
lay the foundations of the modern American newspaper.

At thirty-one Barnum was writing advertisements for the
Bowery Amphitheater at four dollars a week. He was a
"natural" at the business and used his skill to get control
of the American Museum where he began to advertise in
earnest. When the posters of the negro violinist didn't pull,
he changed them to show the violinist playing upside down.
Then they pulled, and the customers didn't mind, because
Barnum gave them a flea circus and a pair of albinos as added
attractions. He advertised his theatrical performances as re-
ligious lectures, and the best and most devout people flocked
to them. His advertisements of Joyce Heth, "the nurse of
George Washington," the Japanese mermaid, the white whales,
Jenny Lind and Jumbo drained the dictionary of adjectives.
Modern movie advertising has added nothing new or better
to the technique. He stood with Tom Thumb before kings.
He lectured to thousands on power of will and success through
godliness. He invested his money in factories and in real estate
developments designed to house religious working men who
didn't drink, smoke or chew. He went bankrupt, but with
the $150,000 his creditors couldn't get he "came back"
gloriously and made another fortune.

To the museum which Barnum gave to Tufts College there
still come on Sunday afternoons good people from the sur-
rounding suburbs who stand in awe before the stuffed carcass
of Jumbo. And the college glee club still sings:

Who was P. T. Barnum?
The first in tents
And consequently hence
The first in the realm of dollars and cents.
The first to know
That a real fine show
Must have a gen-u-ine Jumbo.
The first to come
With the needful sum
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To found our college mus-e-um!
Pee Tee Barnum!!

HENRY WARD BEECHER

Barnum had nerve, a kind of bucolic Yankee hardihood
which enabled him to trade in godliness with the same poker-
faced effrontery that characterized his circus barking. That,
with a certain crude but vigorous histrionism, would appear
to be his contribution to the evolution of the American crowd-
hero type.

Henry Ward Beecher, in contrast, was a deplorable 'fraid-
cat all his days. But he was a much more complex and inter-
esting figure than the great showman, and embodied more
richly the conflicting strains of the cultural heritage. He, too,
was a middle-class crowd hero. Yet curiously, his unrivaled
eminence as a preacher and editor, in a period when the influ-
ence of the church and the church press was enormous, never
quite gave him the mass influence which Barnum clearly had.
One reason for this, of course, was the scandal which clouded
his later years. But there is perhaps another and even more
important reason. Beecher, though a showman both by nature
and by long training, had a private impurity which is incom-
patible with pure showmanship, pure salesmanship, pure
money-making. Beecher took himself seriously. He was a
faker, a liar and a cheat, as was Barnum, and at bottom he
was just about as vulgar as Barnum. But Beecher had a per-
sonal mission to repudiate the harsh Calvinism of his father,
the loveless despotism of that barren Litchfield parsonage, and
proclaim the gospel of love. So Henry Ward Beecher strug-
gled; a scared child, he begged the love of women which he
never earned; women whom he later repudiated. Seemingly
they loved him; at least they never gave him the hatred
which his cowardly betrayals richly deserved. Why? Perhaps
because they pitied him and saw that he was struggling genu-

299

inely after his fashion; struggling to be himself, to defy the
Calvinist God, to assert the Tightness of the tremendous emo-
tionality which was his greatest endowment. Victoria Wood-
hull, that extraordinary woman, probably came close to
stating the truth about Beecher when she wrote:

The immense physical potency of Mr. Beecher, and the indomi-
table urgency of his great nature for the intimacy and embraces of
the noble and cultured women about him, instead of being a bad
thing as the world thinks, or thinks it thinks, or professes to think it
thinks, is one of the noblest and grandest endowments of this truly
great and representative man. Plymouth Church has lived and fed,
and the healthy vigor of public opinion for the last quarter of a
century has been augmented and strengthened from the physical
amativeness of Rev. Henry Ward Beecher.

How Beecher writhed when he read this! And with what
maledictions the brethren of Plymouth Church rejected this
intolerable tribute to their adored pastor! For it was not pre-
cisely Henry Ward Beecher's business to revolutionize the
sexual mores of his time. Not his the stuff of which martyrs
are made. Earlier in his career, Beecher had rejected this role.
When his brother, his father, most of his more courageous
parishioners had embraced the cause of abolition Beecher had
played safe on the slavery question. Instead he had chosen as
his pulpiteering stock in trade the denunciation of the liquor
traffic. And the jibe of a distiller whom he had attacked was
well earned:

You cannot justify slavery by talking about the making of
whiskey. . . . Why is thy tongue still and thy pen idle when the
sentiments of thy brother and thy church on slavery are promul-
gated? Thou idle boaster where is thy vaunted boldness? . . . You
are greatly to be pitied, even by a distiller.

Just what was Henry Ward Beecher's business, his "useful-

300

ness" to the preservation of which he sacrificed friend after
friend along with his own honor and decency? It was the
preaching business. It was also indirectly the advertising de-
partment of the real estate business. In Henry Ward Beecber:
An American Portrait, Paxton Hibben writes:

The investment character of his church was a matter that every
metropolitan minister of that day was expected to bear in mind.
Pews were auctioned off to the highest bidder and church scrip
bore seven per cent interest. A popular preacher was, also, a better
real estate advertisement than whole pages of publicity. Indeed,
such a preacher as Henry Ward Beecher proved, readily secured
pages of publicity for the neighborhood in which he officiated. For
it was the day when church going was the only amusement per-
mitted the godly, and divine service received the attention from the
press later accorded theaters and social activities.

Beecher had trained hard for this business. In a later lecture
at Yale, which took the form of a success story, he said:

I got this idea: that the Apostles were accustomed to feel for a
ground on which the people and they stood together; a common
ground where they could meet. Then they stored up a large number
of the particulars of knowledge, which belonged to everybody;
when they get that knowledge that everybody would admit, placed
in proper form before their minds, then they brought it to bear
upon them with all their excited heart and feeling.

It is not difficult to recognize this as essentially the formula
of Mr. Barton's syndicated lay preachments. In fact, Beecher's
pulpiteering and Barton's syndicated essays are essentially
advertisements designed to "sell" the acquisitive society to
itself. Beecher's method was in all important respects the
method by which an advertising agency after appropriate
"research" arrives at the most effective "copy slant" with
which to sell a new toothpaste or a new gargle. The basic

301

conviction which underlies all these enterprises in showman-
ship, salesmanship and advertising is expressed in one of Mr.
Barton's favorite mottoes: "There is somebody wiser than
anybody. That somebody is everybody."

However, one must admit that although Beecher unques-
tionably had the authentic Big Idea, he was too neurotic and
too blundering ever quite to come through as a successful
advertising man. He was forever picking the wrong theme
song at the wrong time. Take his attitude toward Lincoln:

It will be difficult for a man to be born lower than he was. He
is an unshapely man. He is a man that bears evidence of not having
been educated in schools or in circles of refinement.

Thousands of middle class American parvenues took that
view of Lincoln but it took a pompous blatherskite like
Beecher to plump out with it from the pulpit of a Christian
church. And many of Beecher's parishioners had sense enough
to see that Lincoln was not merely a better man but a better
politician than Beecher. But there we run again into Beecher 's
limiting private impurity. He was not merely a snob, but a
sincere snob.

Beecher was to achieve worse flops than this. In the year
1887, when strikes were sweeping the country, Beecher under-
took to rehabilitate his smirched reputation by coming out
as the defender of "law and order" and "life, liberty, and
prosperity" to quote his significant revision of Jefferson. He
said:

Is the great working class oppressed? . . . yes, undoubtedly, it
is ... God has intended the great to be great and the little to be
little . . . the trades union, originated under the European system,
destroys liberty. ... I do not say that a dollar a day is enough to
support a working man, but it is enough to support a man! . . .
not enough to support a man and five children if a man would

302

insist on smoking and drinking beer. . . . But the man who cannot
live on bread and water is not fit to live.

One can scarcely do better than to quote Paxton Hibben's
comment on this catastrophic muff, which the cartoonists ex-
ploited for years afterwards:

As the slogan of a great crusade in the leadership of which Beecher
could reconquer the esteem of the American public, this bread and
water doctrine somehow lacked pulling power.

Beecher was not so much a cynic as a charlatan, and the
limiting vice of charlatans is that they tend to take themselves
seriously. That is bad business and the more sophisticated
charlatans like Elbert Hubbard are careful not to handicap
their operations by private impurities of this sort. Moreover,
Beecher was sloppy and careless. Take his flier in advertising
in connection with Jay Cooke's Northern Pacific promotion
operations.

In January, 1870, Beecher received $15,000 worth of
Northern Pacific stock for the express purpose of influencing
the public mind to favor the new railroad. Beecher's aid was
to include the use of the Christian Union, a newspaper which
he edited. The matter came to light and Beecher was roundly
denounced. The moral would seem to be that Beecher should
have been more careful as were some of his parishioners, like
"Tearful Tommy" Shearman, clerk of Plymouth Church,
who were also in on the proposition. The modern method of
accomplishing the required enlightenment of public opinion
would have been for Jay Cooke to place a substantial adver-
tising contract with the Christian Union and then threaten
to cancel it if Beecher failed to "co-operate." Theodore Tilton,
the man whose wife Beecher begged love from and whom he
ruined and drove into exile Theodore Tilton, also an editor,

303

told Jay Cooke to go to hell. But Tilton was a good deal of
a man.

Beecher, like other divided souls, was not his own master.
His physical amativeness appears to have been genuine, and
he was an authentic sentimentalist, if there is such a thing.
And he really did hate his father and his father's Calvinism.
So in the end, when it was fairly safe to do so, Beecher came
clean on one count. He denounced the Calvinist hell, whose
flames had been licking his conscience for all those many years.
Call it wish-fulfilment if you like, but Beecher stood up in
Plymouth Church and said:

To tell me that back of Christ is a God who for unnumbered
centuries has gone on creating man and sweeping them like dead
flies nay, like living ones into hell is to ask me to worship a being
as much worse than the conception of a medieval devil as can be
imagined. ... I will not worship cruelty. I will worship love that
sacrifices itself for the good of those who err, and that is as patient
with them as a mother is with a sick child.

On the whole this was a pretty good negative-appeal adver-
tisement. But it wasn't entirely well-timed. Beecher had to
alter the slant several times before he hit the bull's eye of
public opinion that wise "everybody" to whom he dedicated
his "usefulness."

Not a pleasant figure, Beecher. Half sincere and more than
half neurotic charlatans are never pleasant, nor are their lives
at all happy. And in age their faces look like the wrath of God.

ELBERT HUBBARD

In the sequence thus far we have seen a statesman, a finan-
cier, a showman and a preacher, using the philosophy and
techniques of salesmanship and presenting themselves, with
greater or less success, as heroes for the admiration of the

304

crowd. None of them was a professional advertising man. But
all of them were crowd leaders engaged in selling themselves;
also in selling the middle-class acquisitive ethic, and in round-
ing out the body of rationalization which the expansion of
American industrial capitalism required. Advertising, as Mr.
Roy Dickinson, president of Printers' Ink, has pointed out,
is not an independent economic or social entity. It is merely
a function of business management, and all these American
crowd heroes were business men, first, last and always.

In Elbert Hubbard, however, we encounter the advertising
man per se, a professional of professionals. All the others had
"callings" in which, to earn divine favor, they were obliged
to be successful. To be successful they were obliged to employ
the techniques of salesmanship, of showmanship, of advertis-
ing, since these were the most effective techniques of leader-
ship and of rule in the system as they found it. But Hubbard
was called to the pure priesthood of advertising from the
beginning, and by his success in this "calling" became a crowd
hero. True, they called him a great writer, and a great printer,
but the rose of advertising smells the same by whatever name
it is called; in effect he never wrote or printed anything but
advertisements. This, as we shall see, is equally true of that
other great professional, Bruce Barton.

Elbert Hubbard deserves much more careful and detailed
study than he has received at the hands of his biographers.
He was born in 1856 in Bloomington, Illinois, the son of a
physician. At thirty he was already a highly successful adver-
tising man in the employ of a Buffalo, N. Y., soap manufac-
turer; among the sales techniques which he helped to de-
velop were the use of premiums and various devices of credit
extension. In 1892, he had made enough money to retire and
give himself a college education. He entered Harvard as an
undergraduate, but soon gave it up. Obviously President Eliot
and his academic co-workers didn't know what America was
all about. Hubbard wasn't sure himself, but he had a hunch.

305

It was the period of rococo enthusiasms in art, in economics,
in politics. Hubbard went to England, met William Morris,
and cheerfully appropriated all the salable elements of Mor-
ris's social and aesthetic philosophy. He knew what he wanted,
did Hubbard, and especially what he didn't want. He wasn't
having any of Morris's militant socialism for one thing. As far
as radicalism was concerned, Franklin's "surrogate of appear-
ance" was what Hubbard required in other words a "front."
And in his later career as strike-breaker and big business
apologist he discarded even that. As for art, Hubbard made
haste on his return to America to debauch everything that
was good in the Morris aesthetic and to heighten and distort
what was bad to the proportions of burlesque. The quantity
of typographic and other sham "craftsmanship" spawned by
Hubbard's East Aurora workshop is too huge even to cata-
logue. Some of the de luxe editions he got out sold for $500
apiece. He knew his American self-made business man, did
Hubbard, and the cultural "surrogates of appearance" which
the tycoons of the nineties required for their libraries were
hand-illuminated by a "genius" long hair, flowing tie and
everything to the order of the patron.

The "people like to be fooled" said Barnum. But Hubbard
was sharp enough to see that the enterprise required none of
the elaborate paraphernalia of dwarfs, elephants and white
whales that the pioneer showman assembled. Hubbard was a
one-man circus, and a one-man Chautauqua. He edited and
wrote a one-man magazine, The Philistine, and ran a one-man
strike-breaking agency. A solo artist if ever there was one.
True he had helpers and disciples, but none was ever per-
mitted to share the limelight with the only original Fra
Elbertus. His point of view about the help was accurately
expressed in A Message to Garcia.

It is not book learning young men need, but a stiffening of the
rertebrae which will cause them to be loyal to trust, to act promptly,

306

to concentrate their energies, do the thing, "carry a message to
Garcia."

A hard taskmaster, the Fra, who got the efficiency idea
early and gave it its necessary ethical and moral rationaliza-
tion. Carping critics suggested that Hubbard's chief industry
at East Aurora was working his disciples. But big business
seized upon A Message to Garcia as a revelation from Sinai,
and the Fra simply coined money from then on. Hubbard
wrote in this classic manifesto which corporation executives
bought and distributed by the hundred thousand to their
employees:

"He would drop a tear for the men who are struggling to
carry on a great enterprise, whose working hours are not
limited by the whistle and whose hair is fast turning white
through the struggle to hold in line dowdy indifference, slip-
shod imbecility and heartless ingratitude which but for their
enterprise would be both hungry and homeless."

That, it would appear, was the only cause over which Elbert
Hubbard ever dropped a genuine tear. It was his own cause
because he was a capitalist in his own right. (By 1911, his
plant at East Aurora included two hotels, a group of factory
buildings, and a farm, and he had five hundred people on his
payroll.) It was also the cause of the expanding capitalist
economy and the correlative acquisitive ethic, which came to
full maturity during the two decades preceding the war.

One wonders a little at the harshness with which Hubbard
rebuffed the craving of the white-collar slave for "book-learn-
ing." He himself was a kind of philosophical and literary
magpie who lined his nest with trifles gathered from the most
recondite sources, both ancient and modern. These, after hav-
ing received a Hubbardian twist, were dished up in the
Philistine and the Fra as the authentic pot-distilled wisdom
of the sage of East Aurora.

He wrote so beautifully, sighed the newspaper critics of

307

that May-tide of commercial sentimentality which piled high
and shattered itself upon the realities of the war. In 1915,
Elbert Hubbard went down with the Lusitania, and the
Literary Digest in recording the event, quoted this tribute
by Agnes Herbert which appeared in the London Daily
Chronicle:

Give me, I pray you, the magic of Elbert Hubbard. None of your
Hardys, your Barries, your Kiplings for me. The pen of Elbert Hub-
bard, an* it please you. . . . Scoffers called him a literary faker.
On occasion he was so. He popularized his knowledge of the great
philosophers and transposed them so that the man in the street who
would avoid the original teachers as he would the plague, swallowed
the carefully wrapped up wisdom gratefully. . . . Everything
Elbert Hubbard touched was made beautiful by the magic of his
mind. He was the greatest advertising writer in the States and his
methods turned the crying of wares into a literary adventure. Each
was a faceted gem not to be passed by.

This seems a little lush, perhaps. The tribute of one Harold
Bolce, writing under the title "Hubbard, the Homo, Plus" in
the Cosmopolitan for March, 1911, is more to the point.

Elbert Hubbard realized long ago that he was an heir of the ages
and he has foreclosed. He is rich, happy, healthy and wise. He has
the woman he loves. . . . He has struck pay dirt on Parnassus. . . .

"In addition to factories and fields, the Fra has at least a quarter
of a million followers. Hubbard is not a crank. 'Whom do you
represent?' was asked of Harriman when that great financier was
beginning his remarkable career. 'I represent myself,' was the reply.
Similarly Hubbard does. He does not even constitute a part of
the movements his writings have helped to promote. . . .

"A New Thought convention was in session at his inn, the
delegates paying full rates and getting their money's worth.
'What is New Thought?' asked a journalist. "Blamed if I know,'
said Hubbard. . . . Mr. Hubbard is sane as sane as a cash register.

308

In many ways he is, perhaps, the most roundly gifted genius since
Benjamin Franklin."

The Fra's production of advertising copy, not counting his
Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great including the
home of Lydia Pinkham's Vegetable Compound was enor-
mous. As Joseph Wood Krutch pointed out in The Nation,

He is the spiritual father of all the copy which begins with an
anecdote about Socrates and ends with the adjuration to insist upon
the only genuine article in soapless shaving cream. He taught the
merchant swank.

Toward the end of Hubbard's career, he became over-
greedy and overconfident. The small change of lecture fees
and book royalties was not enough. He had become a pretty
important fellow and felt that he was worth important
money. His price on one recorded occasion, for a job of
literary strike-breaking, was about $200,000. Does this sound
excessive? It sounded a little high even to John D. Rocke-
feller and to Ivy Lee, his public relations counsel in the
lamentable affair of the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company.
The correspondence was reprinted in Harper's Weekly, Jan.
30, 1915, under the title, "Elbert Hubbard's Price," and the
first letter is dated June 9, 1914.

Dear Mr. Rockefeller:

I have been out in Colorado and know a little about the situation
there. It seems to me that your stand is eminently right, proper and
logical. A good many of the strikers are poor, unfortunate, ignorant
foreigners who imagine there is a war on [the bullets that riddled
the strikers' tents at Ludlow were doubtless purely imaginary J. R.]
and that they are fighting for liberty. They are men with the
fighting habit preyed on by agitators. . . .

Hubbard went on to cite an article he had written about.

309

the Michigan copper country and said he was writing one
about Colorado. He mentioned his mailing list of 1,000,000
names of members of Boards of Trade, Chambers of Com-
merce, Advertising Clubs, Rotarians, Jovians, schoolteachers,
judges and Members of Congress. He quoted a price of $200
a thousand for extra copies of the issue of The Fra in which
his planned article would appear. He concluded:

Just here, I cannot refrain from expressing my admiration for
those very industrious, hard-working people, Bill Haywood, Charles
Moyer, Mother Jones, Emma Goldman, Lincoln Steffens and Upton
Sinclair. Why don't you benefit the world ... (by stating the
Rockefellers' side of the case. J. R.) ?

Elbert missed out on that one, although he was persistent
enough. He played golf with the elder Rockefeller. He wrote
repeatedly to the well-known Mr. Welborn, President of the
Colorado Fuel and Iron Company. "Do I make myself clear,
boys?" he seemed to be saying. He did. Ivy Lee cannily sug-
gested that Elbert be permitted every facility to gather ma-
terial for his article. Then if Mr. Welborn liked it, he could
doubtless arrange about the price. Ivy Lee knew his Fra. He
wasn't buying any pig in a poke from Elbert Hubbard.

The proposition, as the editor of Harper's Weekly pointed
out, was in two parts:

i.) The Fra offered to sell his opinion.

2.) The Fra offered to make an investigation in support
of his opinion.

The Fra's one-man Chautauqua came to Middletown, N. Y.
when the writer was in high school and also working on the
local daily paper. It came twice in fact. The first year Elbert
lectured on The March of the Centuries. It was a hodge-podge
of Thoreau, Whitman, Emerson, Michelangelo and who not.
I recall being a bit puzzled, although I reported the lecture
respectfully enough, as was proper considering the eminence

310

of the lecturer. The next year, I was a year older and so was
the Fra. He was getting pretty seedy, in fact, I thought.
Moreover, his lecture, under a different title, was word for
word the same balderdash he had given us the year before.
The next day in the columns of the Middletown Daily Times-
Press I took out after him with shrill cries of rage. The owner
of the paper was away and I had fun. The piece was picked
up and reprinted widely. At the moment, as I remember it,
Hubbard had got himself a rating as a Bohemian immoralist,
so that the up-state editors had declared an open season on
the Fra.

My employer, when he came back, was horrified. It was the
first time in the history of his management that the paper
had printed an unkind word about anybody. But the Fra
didn't mind it was just so much publicity grist for his mill.
The public likes to be fooled.

There seems to be nothing final to say about Fra Elbertus
except that he advertised and sold everything and everybody
he could lay his hands on: William Morris, Michelangelo,
Thoreau, Emerson, Karl Marx, Socrates and Paracelsus. And
himself, Elbert Hubbard, a founding father of the adver-
tising profession "the most roundly gifted genius since
Benjamin Franklin."

CHAPTER

20

THE CARPENTER RE-CARPENTERED

ALTHOUGH Mr. Bruce Barton represents a logical projec-
tion of the rising curve along which we have traced the evo-
lution of the American hero, he is, after Elbert Hubbard,
rather an anti-climax. Mr. Barton's role in the war, as director
of publicity for the Y.M.C.A. was comparable, in a way, to
that of Jay Cooke in the Civil War. But Mr. Barton's role
was much smaller and the techniques employed were much
more impersonal and mechanized. Moreover, this mechaniza-
tion and industrialization of sales publicity became even more
pronounced during the period of advertising expansion that
lasted from the Armistice to the fall of 1929. It would seem
that Mr. Barton's distinctive contribution to the evolution
of the American hero was the professionalization of advertis-
ing salesmanship and its sanctification in terms of a modern-
ized version of the Protestant Ethic. The analysis is compli-
cated by the fact that we are dealing here with a contemporary
figure whose career is not completed; nor are the facts of his
career readily available. This, however, is perhaps not so im-
portant as it might seem. Mr. Barton has been a prolific
writer, and it is with the evolution of his thought that we
are primarily concerned.

The Man Nobody Knows was published in 1924, the year
following the publication of Veblen's Absentee Oivnership,
which, in general, has supplied the framework of theory for
this analysis. It was only with the publication of this book

312

that Mr. Barton became, in any sense, a national figure. In
retrospect it is clear that the ad-man's pseudoculture had
already entered upon its period of decadence. The far flung
radiance of advertising during this period was a false dawn;
the fever-flush of a culture already doomed and dying at the
roots. But it is precisely in such periods that the nature of
the culture is most explicitly expressed and documented. The
Man Nobody Knows is an almost perfect thing of its kind:
more significant and revealing as a sociological document, I
think, than either Barnum's autobiography or Hubbard's
Message to Garcia. We see the same thing in the Athens of
Pericles. As Euripides was to the more virile poets of the
Athenian rise to power, Aeschylus and Sophocles, so Bruce
Barton is to Barnum and Fra Elbertus.

When Mr. Barton published The Man Nobody Knows he
had already achieved some standing as a writer of articles
and fiction for the popular women's magazines and his lay
sermonettes were appearing in the Red Book. The advertising
agency in which he was senior partner was rapidly expand-
ing and the chorus of applause which greeted The Man No-
body Knows was no small factor in enhancing the prestige
and profits of its author's more strictly secular activities in
promoting the sale of such products as Lysol, Hind's Honey
and Almond Cream, The Harvard Classics, and a little later,
the Gillette safety razor and blades.

In 1924 the writer was in California, employed at part time
by a San Francisco advertising agency and for the rest, en-
gaged in seeing the country, writing poetry and participating
in indigenous cultural enterprises including the editing of an
anthology of contemporary California poetry. In connection
with this latter enterprise, conducted in collaboration with
Miss Genevieve Taggard and the late George Sterling, I
encountered the poetry of Robinson Jeffers, whose work was
then almost unknown and who was living at Carmel on the
California coast. Greatly excited, I went to the editor of a

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magazine published in San Francisco and devoted to the eco-
nomic and cultural interests of the Pacific coast. I informed
this editor that California had a great poet and that I should
like to call attention to his work in the pages of the magazine.

It is at this point that Bruce Barton enters the picture.
Shortly before, I had been approached by this editor, or his
associate, with a practical proposition. The lay sermons of
Mr. Barton in the Red Book were considered highly edify-
ing by the ex-Kansans and ex-Iowans who had sold their
farms and come to sun their declining years on the Cali-
fornia littoral. The editor felt that if he was to increase his
circulation, he must offer equivalent literary and philosophi-
cal merchandize. I was an advertising man. Mr. Barton was
an advertising man. Couldn't I write something just as good
as Mr. Barton's sermonettes?

I tried. As I studied my model it seemed a simple enough
task. I, too, could quote Socrates, and Emerson, and Lincoln.
I had the requisite theological background my grandfather
had been a shouting Methodist. And as for the style, I, too,
I thought, could be simple though erudite, chaste though
human, practical but portentous.

Well, I wore out one whole typewriter ribbon on that job
and produced nothing but sour parodies. Some imp of per-
versity stood at my shoulder and whispered obscenities into
my ear. I quoted Marx when I had intended to quote Napo-
leon or Benjamin Franklin. Desperately I tried to shake off
this incubus. Once I started with a quotation from Louisa
May Alcott, but when I pulled it out of the typewriter it
read like a contribution to Captain Billy's Whizbang.

Some of the least awful of my efforts I submitted to my
prospective employer. He shook his head. They lacked the
human touch, he said. As a matter of fact, they were human,
all too human. My spirit was willing but the flesh was weak.

The editor was kindly and told me to keep trying. I was
still supposed to be trying when I came in to bring up the

3M

matter of Robinson Jeffers. As I recall it, there was some con-
fusion on that occasion. The editor was still hot on the trail
of a Bruce Barton ersatz and he couldn't get it through his
head that I was talking about something else. When I finally
managed to get within hailing distance of his attention, he
consented reluctantly to print an unpaid review of Jeffers'
privately printed Tamar. The magazine did print part of my
review but the editor wrote a footnote in which he dissented
strongly from my enthusiasm.

About two years later, I saw a copy of a magazine pub-
lished at the Carmel artists' colony. The center spread was
an advertisement of a Carmel realtor headed "Carmel, the
Home of Jeffers." That gave me pause. If I had only gone to
the realtors in the first place, I reflected, I might have made
better headway with that Jeffers' promotion. Later, too, I
came to understand why I had failed so miserably in my
attempt to imitate those Barton sermonettes. The simple fact
that they were advertisements had never occurred to me. They
were and are advertisements, designed to sell the American
pseudoculture to itself.

I was used to writing advertisements. Maybe, if I had tried,
I could have written correct imitations of Mr. Barton's adver-
tisements of obscure but contented earthworms, of the virtues
of industry and diligence, of the vanity of fame. Also, maybe
not. Mr. Barton may be only a minor artist, but I suspect
that he is inimitable.

The digression is perhaps excusable in that it reveals the
early spread of the Barton influence as compared with that
of a major poet of the era whom the average American has
never heard of. By the time I returned to New York, Mr.
Barton had published The Man Nobody Knows and was soon
a national figure comparable in influence to Henry Ward
Beecher. Instead of preaching in Plymouth Church, he was
the honored guest at luncheons of Rotary and Kiwanis clubs
and Chambers of Commerce. Instead of editing a religious

315

journal early in his career he had edited the short-lived
Every Week his syndicated sermonettes were published in
hundreds of newspapers. A professor of homiletics in a well-
known seminary has assured me that the influence of Mr.
Barton's writings upon the Protestant Church in America has
been enormous. The son of a clergyman, brought up in a small
Middle-Western city, not unlike the "Middletown" so ably
described by the Lynds, he learned early the lessons of pious
emulation and of "salesmanlike pusillanimity" which were the
ineluctable patterns of behavior for all young men of good
family. And Mr. Barton's family was excellent. His father
was not merely a popular and respected preacher but a scholar
of parts, author of a not undistinguished life of Lincoln. But
this distinction, in the early years at least, brought no propor-
tionate pecuniary rewards. So Bruce suffered the typical ordeal
of the minister's son. He had the entree to the best houses in
the community but no money with which to compete in the
local arena of conspicuous waste, pecuniary snobbism, etc.

Here we have the two opposing absolutes which, in his later
creative years, Mr. Barton undertook to reconcile: the quite
genuine Christian piety, and enforced asceticism of the par-
sonage, and the "spirit of self-help and collusive cupidity
that made and animated the country town at its best." The
quotation is from Veblen's study of the country town in
Absentee Ownership. The neo-Calvinist ethical rationaliza-
tions described by Max Weber are brought into sharp relief
by Veblen's analysis. In the following passage he seems almost
to be laying down the ideological ground plan for Mr. Bar-
ton's subsequent career. Says Veblen:

Solvency not only puts a man in the way of acquiring merit, but
it makes him over into a substantial citizen whose opinions and
preferences have weight and who is, therefore, enabled to do much
good for his fellow citizens that is to say, shape them somewhat
to his own pattern. To create mankind in one's own image is a

316

work that partakes of the divine, and it is a high privilege which
the substantial citizen commonly makes the most of. Evidently this
salesmanlike pursuit of the net gain has a high cultural value at the
same time that it is invaluable as a means to a competence.

One must not be misled into regarding Mr. Barton's specific
contribution as of the iconoclastic or creative sort. He found
ready to hand the ethical code and the theological rationaliza-
tion of this code. His task was merely that of the continuer,
the popularizer. Here in Veblen's words is a formulation,
complete in all essentials, of the idealistic code of the adver-
tising agency business, of which Mr. Barton was to become so

distinguished an ornament:

The country town and the business of its substantial citizens are
and have ever been an enterprise in salesmanship; and the begin-
ning of wisdom in salesmanship is equivocation. There is a decent
measure of equivocation which runs its course on the hither side of
prevarication or duplicity, and an honest salesman such "an honest
man as will bear watching" will endeavor to confine his best
efforts to this highly moral zone where stands the upright man who
is not under oath to tell the whole truth. But "self-preservation
knows no moral law"; and it is not to be overlooked that there
habitually enter into the retail trade of the country towns many
competitors who do not falter at prevarication and who even do not
hesitate at outright duplicity; and it will not do for an honest man
to let the rogues get away with the best or any of the trade,
at the risk of too narrow a margin of profit on his own business
that is to say a narrower margin than might be had in the absence
of scruple. And then there is always the base line of what the la\r
allows; and what the law allows can not be far wrong.

When Mr. Barton was going to high school and Sunday
school, one of the things he could scarcely help noticing was
the characteristic red store front of the A. & P. Big Business
was beginning to build the distributive counterpart of the

317

emerging system of mass production. Veblen notes this transi-
tion as follows:

Toward the close of the century, and increasingly since the turn
of the century, the trading community of the country towns has
been losing its initiative as a maker of charges and has by degrees
become tributary to the great vested interests that move in the
background of the market. In a way the country towns have in an
appreciable degree fallen into the position of tollgate keepers for
the distribution of goods and collection of customs for the large
absentee owners of the business.

Mr. Barton's eminence both as advertising man and as an
author became established during the postwar decade. As
most people realize by this time, the catastrophic economic
and cultural effects of the war were deferred and postdated
so far as America was concerned. This postdating was ac-
complished by salesmanship and promotion applied to new
industries notably automobiles, the movies and radio. It was
without doubt the rankest period of financial and commercial
thievery in our whole history. Salesmanship became a thing-in-
itself, incorporated, watered, reorganized, re-watered, aided
and abetted by the state, and then duly sanctified and vali-
dated under the Constitution. Veblen's concept of Absentee
Ownership became less and less descriptive of the actual situa-
tion in which the going rule became: "never give a stock-
holder a break." The more realistic terms were no longer own-
ers and managers but "insiders" and "outsiders." One has
only to refer to the Insull affair, and to the exploits of Messrs.
Mitchell and Wiggin of the financial oligarchy, to establish the
justice of this description. The reductio ad absurdum of the
capitalist economy was accomplished by the "profitless pros-
perity" of the New Era. It will remain Mr. Barton's undying
distinction that, in The Man Nobody Knows, he accomplished
the reductio ad absurdum of "the Protestant Ethic."

318

With this background we are now in a position to give Mr.
Barton's masterpiece the sober and respectful attention which
it should long ago have received at the hands of sociologists
and literary critics. It is worth recalling that Henry Ward
Beecher, too, wrote a life of Christ and that Elbert Hubbard,
albeit a free thinker, was also faithful after his fashion in that
he did not fail to exploit such elements of the Christian tradi-
tion as suited his market. The Christs of Renan, of Nietzsche,
of Henry Ward Beecher, of Elbert Hubbard, of Giovanni
Papini, of Bruce Barton these and other interpretations of
the Christ figure should provide an interesting and instruc-
tive gallery for the student of human ecology. But in the
space at our disposal here we must confine ourselves to Mr.
Barton's Christ. Clearly Mr. Barton felt that if the Saviour
was to live again in the mind and heart of the twentieth cen-
tury American business man, a radical though reverent recon-
struction of the legendary Christ was required.

The first point to note about The Man Nobody Knows is
that the book is an advertisement. Mr. Barton is clearly en-
gaged in "selling" the twentieth century American sales and
advertising executive to the country at large and to himself.
This secondary aspect of Mr. Barton's unique promotion en-
terprise is very important. It must be remembered that in
terms of social prestige the big-time salesman, and especially
the advertising man, was still, in 1924, an upstart and a
parvenu; this in spite of the strategic, even crucial impor-
tance of the salesman, the promoter, the advertising man in
the struggle of business to keep the disruptive force of ap-
plied science from destroying the capitalist economy. In 1924
we were already face to face with the tragi-comic social para-
dox which Stuart Chase describes in his Economy of Abun-
dance. The only method of resolving that paradox open to the
business man was to sell more goods at a profit and, when the

319

"sales resistance" of a progressively dis-employed population
couldn't be broken down, to sabotage industry by monopoly
control of production and prices.

So Mr. Barton was the man of the hour on more than one
count. Despite the stout labors of P. T. Barnum, Elbert Hub-
bard and others, advertising still bore the stigma of its patent
medicine origins. In the callous view of the crowd, the ad-
man still wore the rattlesnake belt and brandished the pills
of the medicine man who, in the light of flaring gasoline
torches, had for many decades been giving the admiring citi-
zens of Veblen's "country town" practical lessons in the
theory of business enterprise and the uses of salesmanlike
duplicity.

But times had changed. Advertising on the grand scale had
become an industry no less essential than coal or steel. It had
become a profession endorsed, sanctified and subsidized by
dozens of Greek-porticoed "Schools of Business Administra-
tion" in which a new priesthood of "business economists"
translated the techniques of mass prevarication into suitable
academic euphemisms. Advertising in other words, mass
cozenage had become a major function of business man-
agement. The ad-man had become the first lieutenant of the
new Caesars of America's commercial imperium not merely
on the economic front but also on the cultural front.

The rattlesnake belt and the gasoline torch were no longer
appropriate for so eminent a functionary. They must be
burned, buried, destroyed, forgotten. The ad-man needed
glorification and needed it badly.

It was to this task that Mr. Barton addressed himself with
an elan, an imaginative sweep and daring that can be ade-
quately characterized only by the word "genius." Consider
the magnitude of the enterprise. It was necessary not merely

320

to reconcile the ways of the ad-man to God, but to redeem
and rehabilitate a tedious and discredited Saviour in the eyes
of a faithless and materialist generation. Mr. Barton accom-
plished both of these stupendous tasks in a single brief book.
And he was able to do this because, as a true son of his father,
he had not fallen from grace. Like a modern Sir Galahad, his
strength was as the strength of ten because his heart was pure.
He was sincere.

I am aware that certain readers, who have not had the
benefits of Mr. Barton's strict upbringing, will probably
question this statement. I can only invite them to consider
the evidence.

In the best homiletic tradition, Mr. Barton starts with a
scriptural text:

"Wist ye not that I must be about my Father's Business?"
(The italics are Mr. Barton's.)

The people settle back in their pews, the little boy in the
second row finds a safe cache for his gum, the rustle of gar-
ments ceases, and the little boy hears the preface of Mr. Bar-
ton's great book entitled "How it came to be written."

The little boy's body sat bolt upright in the rough wooden chair,
but his mind was very busy.

This was his weekly hour of revolt.

The kindly lady who could never seem to find her glasses would
have been terribly shocked if she had known what was going on
inside the little boy's mind.

"You must love Jesus," she said every Sunday, "and God."

The little boy did not say anything. He was afraid to say any-
thing; he was almost afraid that something would happen to him
because of the things he thought.

Love God! Who was always picking on people for having a good
time, and sending little boys to hell because they couldn't do better
in a world which He had made so hard! Why didn't God take some
one His own size?

Love Jesus! The little boy looked up at the picture which hung

3*1

on the Sunday school wall. It showed a pale young man with flabby
forearms and a sad expression. The young man had red whiskers.

Then the little boy looked across to the other wall. There was
Daniel, good old Daniel, standing off the lions. The little boy liked
Daniel. He liked David, too, with the trusty sling that landed a
stone square on the forehead of Goliath. And Moses, with his rod
and his big brass snake. They were winners those three. He won-
dered if David could whip Jeffries. Samson could! Say, that would
have been a fight!

But Jesus! Jesus was the "lamb of God." The little boy did not
know what that meant, but it sounded like Mary's little lamb.
Something for girls sissified. Jesus was also "meek and lowly," a
"man of sorrows and acquainted with grief." He went around for
three years telling people not to do things.

Sunday was Jesus' day; it was wrong to feel comfortable or laugh
on Sunday.

The little boy was glad when the superintendent thumped the
bell and announced: "We will now sing the closing hymn." One
more bad hour was over. For one more week the little boy had got
rid of Jesus.

Years went by and the boy grew up and became a business man.

He began to wonder about Jesus.

He said to himself: "Only strong magnetic men inspire great
enthusiasm and build great organizations. Yet Jesus built the great-
est organization of all. It is extraordinary. . . ."

He said, "I will read what the men who knew Jesus personally
said about Him. I will read about Him as though He were a new
historical character, about whom I had never heard anything at all."

The man was amazed.

A physical weakling! Where did they get that idea? Jesus pushed
a plane and swung an adze; He was a successful carpenter. He
slept outdoors and spent His days walking around His favorite
lake. His muscles were so strong that when He drove the money-
changers out, nobody dared to oppose Him!

A kill-joy! He was the most popular dinner guest in Jerusalem!
The criticism which proper people made was that he spent too
much time with publicans and sinners (very good fellows, on the

whole, the man thought) and enjoyed society too much. They
called Him a "wine bibber and a gluttonous man."

A failure! He picked up twelve men from the bottom ranks of
business and forged them into an organization that conquered the
world.

When the man had finished his reading he exclaimed, "This is a
man nobody knows."

"Some day," said he, "some one will write a book about Jesus.
Every business man will read it and send it to his partners and his
salesmen. For it will tell the story of the founder of modern busi-
ness."

Note the "action pattern" suggested in the last sentence.
It is a recognized device of advertising copy technique: "Mail
the coupon today!" "Look for the trade-mark!" "Send no
money," etc. Business men got the point and distributed
thousands of copies of the book. In fact no other lay sermon,
save only Elbert Hubbard's Message to Garcia, has been so
generously subsidized in this way.

Note, too, the evocation of the "little boy" who is, of
course, Mr. Barton himself. But he is also all the other little
boys who had squirmed in those straight pews of the Protes-
tant Communion and now ruled the church of business. Out
of the mouths of babes. Mr. Barton, who is, in fact, a re-
markable example of arrested development, didn't have to
get down on his hands and knees to play church with these
children. Standing upright and fearless, he saw eye to eye
with every fourteen-year-old intelligence in the hierarchy
of business.

The process of imaginative identification with the Saviour,
suggested in the preface, is continued in a sequence of logical
and reverent chapters: "The Executive," "The Outdoor
Man," "The Sociable Man," "His Method," "His Advertise-
ments," "The Founder of Modern Business," "The Master."

It is regrettable that space is lacking for extensive quota-

323

tion. No paraphrase of Mr. Barton's remarkable chronicle
can do more than faintly suggest the apostolic glow and con-
viction of the original. In the first chapter he notes that the
great Nazarene, like all successful business executives, was
above personal resentments and petty irritations. When the
disciples, weary at the end of the day, were rebuffed by in-
hospitable villagers, they urged Jesus to call down fire from
heaven and destroy them. Here is Mr. Barton's imaginative
rendering of the Saviour's behavior on this occasion:

There are times when nothing a man can say is nearly so power-
ful as saying nothing. Every executive knows that instinctively.
To argue brings him down to the level of those with whom he
argues; silence convicts them of their folly; they wish they had not
spoken so quickly; they wonder what he thinks. The lips of Jesus
tightened; His fine features showed the strain of the preceding
weeks and in His eyes there was a foreshadowing of the more bitter
weeks to come. . . . He had so little time, and they were con-
stantly wasting His time. ... He had come to save mankind,
and they wanted Him to gratify His personal resentment by burn-
ing up a village!

So, in later years, Mr. Barton, like Jesus, like Lincoln, knew
how to ignore the jeers of captious critics. He was a personage
and knew it. He had important work to do. He had to write
with his own hand the advertising message of important
Christian advertisers, Jewish advertisers and just advertisers.
And he had to direct the work of others and endure, like
Jesus, the stupidity and folly of his helpers; like Elbert Hub-
bard, he was sometimes moved to cry out against the "slip-
shod imbecility and heartless ingratitude which but for their
enterprise would be both hungry and homeless." Once in a
symposium on what the advertising agency business most
needed, he wrote, "God give us men."

It would seem probable, too, that Mr. Barton was not un-

3^4

mindful of the career of his great predecessor, Fra Elbertus.
Did Mr. Barton think of himself as playing Jesus to the Fra's.
John the Baptist? Probably not, but the following passage
suggests the comparison:

Another young man had grown up near by and was beginning to
be heard from in the larger world. His name was John. How much
the two boys may have seen of each other we do not know; but
certainly the younger, Jesus, looked up to and admired his hand-
some, fearless cousin. We can imagine with what eager interest he
must have received the reports of John's impressive success at the
capital. He was the sensation of the season. The fashionable folk
of the city were flocking out to the river to hear his denunciations;
some of them even accepted his demand for repentance and were
baptized. ... A day came when he (Jesus) was missing from the
carpenter shop; the sensational news spread through the streets that
he had gone to Jerusalem, to John, to be baptized.

Why boys leave home. Another bright young man digs
himself out of the sticks and goes to the big town to make
his fortune.

In the chapter entitled "The Outdoor Man" Mr. Barton
undertakes to prove that Jesus was what is known as a he-man,
somewhat resembling Mr. Barton himself in stature and
physique. In support of this contention he points out:

1. He was a carpenter and carpenters develop powerful
forearms. No weakling could have wielded the whip that
drove the money-changers from the temple.

2. He was attractive to women, including "Mary and
Martha, two gentle maiden ladies who lived outside Jerusa-
lem" and Mary Magdalene, whose sins he forgave.

In "The Sociable Man" Jesus is seen at the Marriage Feast
of Cana. If not the life of the party He is at least genial and
tactful. The wine gives out and Mr. Barton exclaims: "Pic-
ture if you will the poor woman's chagrin. This was her

3*5

daughter's wedding the one social event in the life of the
family." So Jesus, to uphold the family's middle-class dignity
turns the water into wine.

"His Method" describes the selling campaigns of the ob-
scure Nazarene through which he climbed to the distinction
of being the "most popular dinner guest in Jerusalem." Paul,
especially, impresses Mr. Barton Paul, who was "all things
to all men" and who became the hero of Mr. Barton's latest
book, He Upset The World.

"Surely," remarks Mr. Barton, "no one will consider us
lacking in reverence if we say that every one of the 'prin-
ciples of modern salesmanship' on which business men so
much pride themselves, are brilliantly exemplified in Jesus'
talk and work."

The final conference with the disciples is presented as a
kind of "pep" talk similar to those by which, during the late
New Era, the salesmen of South American bonds were nerved
to go forth and gather in the savings of widows and orphans.

"His Advertisements" in Mr. Barton's view were the mir-
acles. Here is the way one of them, according to Mr. Barton,
might have been reported in the Capernaum News:

PALSIED MAN HEALED
JESUS OF NAZARETH CLAIMS RIGHT TO

FORGIVE SINS
PROMINENT SCRIBES OBJECT

"BLASPHEMOUS," SAYS LEADING CITIZEN

"BUT ANYWAY I CAN WALK," HEALED
MAN RETORTS

In the parables, especially, says Mr. Barton, the Master
wrote admirable advertising copy, and laid the foundations
of the profession to which Mr. Barton pays this eloquent
tribute:

326

As a profession advertising is young; as a force it is as old as the
world. The first four words uttered, "Let there be light," consti-
tute its charter.

In "The Founder of Modern Business" Mr. Barton finds
Jesus' recipe for success in the following scriptural quotation:

Whosoever will be great among you, shall be your minister; and
whosoever of you will be the chiefest, shall be servant of all.

Mr. Barton is quick to identify this as the modern "Serv-
ice" creed of Rotary. He says:

. . . quite suddenly, Business woke up to a great discovery. You
will hear that discovery proclaimed in every sales convention as
something distinctly modern and up to date. It is emblazoned on
the advertising pages of every magazine.

One gets fed up with this sort of thing rather easily. Ad-
dicts of the faith who find their appetite for the gospel ac-
cording to Bruce Barton unappeased by the foregoing quo-
tations, are urged to consult the original. The book ran into
many editions and duly took its place on the meagre book-
shelves of the American Babbitry, alongside of the First
Success Story Benjamin Franklin's Autobiography, the
Second Success Story P. T. Barnum's Autobiography, and
a de luxe edition of Elbert Hubbard's The Message to Garcia.

In due course, Mr. Barton's great book was made into a
movie, which enjoyed some success and further extended the
popularity and influence of the author. So far as I know, no
attempt has been made to sculpture Mr. Barton's re-carpen-
tered Carpenter in wood, plaster or papier-mache. It would
seem that the dissemination of the new icon might well have
been put on a mass-production, mass-distribution basis, like
that of the Kewpie doll, and Mickey Mouse. The neglect of

3*7

this logical extension of business enterprise is possibly attribut-
able to the jealous opposition of the vested interests concerned
with the ancient Propagation of the Faith, to which Veblen
refers in a passage already quoted.

The Man Nobody Knows was preceded by a relatively un-
successful lay sermon entitled What Can A Man Believe? It
was followed by The Book Nobody Knows, a volume of Old
and New Testament exegesis, done with Mr. Barton's char-
acteristic unconventional charm, which found much favor
in church circles, and among Christian business men. A col-
lection of Mr. Barton's syndicated sermonettes has been pub-
lished under the title On the Up and Up. One finishes the
reading of this volume convinced more than ever that Mr.
Barton is sincere. Take, for example, the quite charming little
essay entitled "Real Pleasures," in which the author describes
his delight in "walking along Fifth Avenue, looking in the
shop windows, and making a mental inventory of the things
I don't want." This, from the head of one of America's
largest advertising agencies, is sheer heresy. But Mr. Barton,
being exempt from the "vice of little minds," is full of her-
esies. Elsewhere he praises the simple joys of primitive coun-
try living. And when asked by "Advertising and Selling" to
contribute his professional credo to a running symposium
which included the leading advertising men in America, Mr.
Barton went much farther than any other contributor in
recognizing, by implication at least, the inflated and exploita-
tive nature of the business, and in predicting the present
drive for government-determined standards and grades. It
should be added that his firm has for many years been con-
sidered rather exceptionally "ethical" in its practice; that it
has never used bought or paid-for testimonials; that it has
declined much profitable business on ethical grounds; that
it has doubtless tried to give its clients a fair break always,
and the public as much of a break as considerations of prac-
tical business expediency permitted. There are a number of

3*8

agencies of which this may be said, and it isn't saying much.
Mr. Barton's firm, operating well within the existing code of
commercial morality, and even striving sincerely to advance
and stiffen that code, has sponsored and produced huge
quantities of advertising bunk, of expedient half-truths, etc.
that being the nature of the business.

It is clear that in Mr. Barton we have at least four per-
sonalities:

1. The Sunday School boy who hated the Calvinist Christ
(the Beecher complex) ;

2. The infantile, extraverted, climbing American who
created that grotesque ad-man Christ in his own image, as a
kind of institutionalized, salesmanlike tailor's dummy, to
serve as a kind of robot reception clerk for the front office
of Big Business.

3. The timid but talented minor essayist and dilettante
who, given different circumstances, and subjected to a dif-
ferent set of social compulsions, might have produced a con-
siderable body of charming and more or less scholarly prose;
who might even have come to understand something of the
meaning of the Christ legend and of the ethical values by
which a civilization lives or dies.

4. The intelligent, acquisitive, informed man of affairs
who knows a little of what it is all about, but lacks the nerve
to do anything about it, except by intermittently adult fits
and starts. Good old Daniel! Just what lions has Mr. Barton
ever fought honestly and fought to a finish?

An interesting figure, slighter on the whole than either
Beecher or Hubbard, but more complex, perhaps, than either.
It was the institutionalized and syndicated Barton that came
to the fore again in his last book He Upset the World, which
was excellently reviewed by Mr. Irving Fineman, the novelist,
in the magazine Opinion for April 25, 1932. Mr. Fineman
notes that Mr. Barton has become a little patronizing in his
attitude toward The Man. He knows Him better now, per-

3*9

haps; certainly he recognizes that St. Paul was a better busi-
ness man. Says Mr. Fineman: "It is a bit shocking, no later
than the twentieth page of this book, to find Bruce Barton
censuring Jesus however gently! 'He had no fixed method,
no business-like program. . . . He came not to found a
church or to formulate a creed; He came to lead a life.' So
that, once having assigned to each his job to Jesus, as it
were, the divinely pure genius, and to Paul, the hustling, mun-
dane entrepreneur it becomes a simple matter for Mr. Barton
to accept, indulgently, the impracticality of the one, who
hadn't the sense apparently to syndicate his stuff, and the
go-getting tactics of the other, who was frankly, "all things
to all men."

In his preface, Mr. Barton explains that he hadn't been
interested in St. Paul at first, but was induced by his pub-
lisher to re-examine the scriptural sources and thereby con-
verted to writing the book. Mr. Fineman's parting jibe
deserves recording:

"He should be warned however against the wiles of pub-
lishers, lest one of them induce him to write a little book
about Judas."

The implied analogy would be more just if, in Mr. Barton,
we were dealing with an adult and fully integrated personality,
but obviously this is not the case. One does not accuse a child
of betraying anything or anybody. And Mr. Barton exhibits,
more clearly, I think, than any other contemporary public
figure, the characteristic infantilism of the American busi-
ness man.

One suspects, however, that Mr. Barton has grown up
sufficiently to regret his masterpiece; indeed, that it is be-
ginning to haunt him, like a Frankenstein monster. The fol-
lowing episode, which I have slightly disguised, out of con-
sideration for the organization involved, would appear to
confirm this suspicion.

I was once visited in my office by a lady who represented

330

a committee, organized to serve a worthy, sensible, and ad-
mirable philanthropic cause. The committee was getting out
a new letterhead, of which she showed me a first proof. She
explained that she wanted a pregnant sentence that would
express the high aims of her movement. She had found that
sentence in The Man Nobody Knows, by Bruce Barton,
author and Christian advertising man. She had learned that
I knew Mr. Barton. She knew that his books were copy-
righted, but? Would I intercede for her and obtain Mr. Bar-
ton's permission to use as the motto of her society one of the
most felicitous and beautiful sentences she had ever read?

Gladly, I replied, wondering what this was all about. But
what was the sentence?

She opened the Book. She pointed to the underlined sen-
tence. It read: "Let there be Light!"

I dictated a long memorandum urging Mr. Barton to grant
her request. Mr. Barton was not amused.

33'

CHAPTER

21

A GALLERY OF PORTRAITS

NO DESCRIPTION of the ad-man's pseudoculture can be
considered complete without some notation of the curious
atrophies, distortions and perversions of mind and spirit which
the ad-man himself suffers as a consequence of his profes-
sional practice.

I have heard it said of So-and-so and So-and-so in the pro-
fession: "They are born advertising men." Obviously this
cannot be true. Even if one assumes the inheritance of ac-
quired characteristics, the phenomenon of advertising is too
recent in biological time to have brought about any substan-
tial modification of human genes. Moreover, although I have
known many perverse and diabolical little boys, none of these
creatures was sufficiently monstrous to prompt the suspicion:
"This will grow up and be an advertising man."

No, the ad-man is born not of woman, but of the society.
He is the subhuman or pseudohuman product of an inhuman
culture. His insanities are not congenital. They are the in-
sanities of a society which, having failed to embody in its
growth process any valid economic, ethical or moral con-
cepts, is moronic in these respects. The ad-man seems excep-
tional and terrifying merely because his whole being is given
over to the expression and dissemination of this moronism.

The ad-man is not necessarily an intellectual prostitute. As
already pointed out, if one accepts the economic and social
premises of American capitalism, the ad-man plays a logical

332

and necessary role. The production of customers, and the
control of factory production in the direction of profit-mo-
tivated obsolescence these are functions in a profit economy
no less essential than the production of coal or steel. Most
advertising men feel this very strongly. It gives them confi-
dence and conviction, so that they are the more easily recon-
ciled to their habitual and necessary violation of the prin-
ciples of truth, beauty, intelligence and ordinary decency.
They are profit-motivated producers of customers, and they
have the producer's psychology. It is right and beautiful to
make a customer out of a woman, even though this involves
making her into a fool, a slave and a greedy neurotic. It is
so right and so beautiful that the ad-man tends to make the
same sort of thing out of himself, his family and his friends.
I have had many friends in the advertising business who have
been solicitous about me, because of my unorthodox views.
At various times I have been put to some embarrassment to
keep them from trying, for the good of my soul, to make
me also a fool, a slave and a greedy neurotic. Your run of the
mill ad-man has no inferiority complex; indeed he is posi-
tively messianic about his profession there isn't a doubt in
a carload of these fellows.

This sounds quite mad, but it is also quite true. The in-
ference, also true, is that the society is mad; the ad-man is
exceptional only in that he carries more than his share of the
burden of this madness.

Hence it is easy to absolve the ad-man on the ground that
he knows not what he does. This, I think, is a just acquittal
for the vast majority of the profession. But there are, of
course, many exceptions. There are many men and women in
the profession who have explored worlds of the mind and
the spirit lying beyond this Alice-in-Wonderland world of
the advertising business. They are perhaps somewhat to be
blamed, especially those fallen angels who use their excep-
tional qualities of mind and imagination actively to promote

333

what they know to be a very dirty and anti-social traffic. The
distinction, while tenuous, is, I think, genuine. It is between
the intellectually sophisticated ad-man who sells a part of
himself to make a living, and the greedy cynic, often with a
will-to-power obsession, who sells all of himself. I and most
of my friends in the business belonged to the first category,
which is fairly numerous. The will-to-power cynic is quite
exceptional, and, incidentally, he usually goes mad, too; he
tends to believe in and justify this acquired, distorted self;
so that in the end we see this ex-literary man or ex-artist as
a Captain of Advertising, frothing at the mouth at advertis-
ing conventions, or leading his hosts of devout, iron-skulled
ad-men into battle for God, for country and for Wet Smack
chocolate bars.

In the portrait studies which follow I have tried to include
proportionate representation of all three basic types. While
these studies are based on the writer's observation of real
people, they are all composite portraits; names, places and
incidents have been disguised. The writer is not interested in
attacking individuals; rather he permits himself the faint
hope that some very likable ad-men who may read this book
may be freed from the coils of the "systematized illusions" in
which they have become entangled along with their victims.
When, as now, we are faced with the necessity of building a
civilization to replace the self-destroying barbarism which
has hitherto contented us, it is well to have as many people
as possible know what they are doing, even though what they
are doing happens to be a mean and dirty job. Most jobs are
like that in our society, if that is any comfort.

ECONOMICS

Pete Sykes is the American University's great gift to ad-

334

vertising, and perhaps the most typical advertising man I
know.

In both the smaller and larger American colleges and uni-
versities, during the period just before the war, the mind-
set of the average bright young man was determined by the
time he became a sophomore. Pete was above the average as
to energy and charm, but in all other respects he was the
perfect stereotype of the extraverted, emulative, career man
in his undergraduate phase.

He had some literary talent and made the staff of the col-
lege newspaper. He had some executive ability and became
assistant manager of the football team. He was personable,
his family was good enough, and he made one of the snootiest
fraternities. All this happened during his first two years. As
to his studies: in a moment of confidence he once confessed
to me that he could make nothing of Professor Ely's eco-
nomics, although he had studied hard in that course. He had
determined to make a million dollars after graduating, and
he had been given to understand that economics was the
science of making a million dollars.

When Pete made this confession he was the managing head
of a large Middle Western agency. Although then only in his
early forties he had already made about half that million
dollars. Without benefit of Ely, however. I tried to explain.
I cited the correspondence of a radical editor with an engineer,
exiled in Alaska, whose grown sons were in college in Seattle
and also studying Ely. The engineer became curious and read
Ely himself. He wrote: "I think Professor Ely should have
married Mary Baker Eddy, for they are manifestly agreed as
to the non-existence of matter. And if they had married, I
am confident that their child would have been a bubble."

Pete laughed and asked me what book he could read that
did make sense. I suggested Thorstein Veblen's Theory of
Business Enterprise. Fine! After lunch he stepped into a book
store and ordered the book; also a new detective novel.

335

I wasn't horsing Pete. He was and is a good fellow, with
enough salt in his nature to make him worth taking seriously,
which is more than can be said for most advertising men.
After graduating he had been a newspaper reporter, and he
understood the surfaces of American life very well. He was
tolerant, too, if realistic. A year later he fired a friend of mine
on the ground that my friend's insistence on giving no more
than half time to the "business nobody knows" implied a lack
of unmitigated devotion to his profession, although in all
other respects he was o.k. My friend thought his point well
taken and departed gracefully.

Pete had to fire over a third of his staff as the depression
deepened, and it bothered him. The civilization had put him
on the spot, and it wasn't fair, because he was still only a
bright sophomore. His ambition, his emulative obligation to
himself, to his parents, to his classmates, and later to a grow-
ing family, had never permitted him to achieve the intellec-
tual maturity which he secretly craved. What was he to do
with these stock-market-ruined surplus executives, these
debt-burdened copy writers Smith's wife was going to have
a baby, Robinson had tuberculosis, etc., etc. Pete stalled, com-
promised, whittled, made private unadvertised loans out of
his own pocket, and in the end had to fire most of them any-
way.

Pete fought hard. To hold the business. To get new busi-
ness. But he was on the spot there, too. Pete was ethical, a
power for "truth in advertising," and as sincere about it as
practical business considerations would permit. His agency
turned out quantities of bunk, of course. But respectable
bunk. No bought-and-paid-for testimonials. None of the
gaudier and dirtier patent medicine accounts. His fastidious-
ness cost him money and work. He had to prove that it was
possible to match the achievements of the testimonial adver-
tisers by using other, more ethical advertising methods. It
wasn't easy, and sometimes the ethical distinction between

336

Pete's methods and those of the testimonial racketeers seemed
a bit tenuous. Particularly now that the depression had forced
advertisers to become increasingly hard-boiled.

So Pete wasn't happy. He had worked terribly hard all his
life. He was moral. He had even cut out liquor so that he
could work harder. After failing and succeeding, failing and
succeeding, half a dozen times, that million dollars which he
desired with such nai've emotional abandon was, in 1929,
almost within his grasp. But the stock market crash had
postponed the realization of that ambition indefinitely. And
now the iron collar of economics Ely's, Veblen's, some-
body's economics was not only choking him, driving down
his standard of living, brushing aside his pecuniary ambitions,
but forcing him to be an advertising faker, a slave driver, a
hard-boiled executant of decisions written in red ink and
passed by vote of his board of directors.

It wasn't fair and Pete suffered. There he was, grimacing
like the gargoyle outside his skyscraper office, chilled by the
winds of panic that swept the country, watching the waters
of prosperity recede, taking with them first his profits, and
now threatening the very continuance of his profession. A
tough spot. Out on the end of a limb. The buzz of the Brain
Trust in Washington worried him. Would they saw off the
limb on which he was sitting? But that would be outrageous!
He was a hard, competent worker. And a good fellow. He
had fought like hell in behalf of his employees. He had re-
sisted the onslaughts of the advertising vandals who were
destroying reader-confidence. Economics? Damn economics!
Where did he get off in this beautiful American economic
scheme of things? And when would he get a little sleep?

You can see how hard it is to find effigies to burn, bad men
to drive out of office. I don't blame Pete. I blame the Ameri-
can university for spawning so many sophomores, telling
them that advertising was a respectable career for an honest,
intelligent person, and then walking out on them as soon as

337

the depression proved that the reverend professors of "eco-
nomics" were just as imbecile as any village socialist had al-
ways said they were. . . . No, it's no use blaming the uni-
versity either. Let's blame Alexander Hamilton a good deal
and Thomas Jefferson, too. And John Calvin. And Daniel
Shays for not being as good a revolutionary engineer as
Lenin. . . .

I guess that let's Pete out. If I were Commissar in a Soviet
America and I can think of few people less competent for
the job I should want Pete at a desk around the corner.
I'd have to watch him for a while because he has a consider-
able will-to-power. But he's a good fellow, and, given some-
thing serious to do, a good workman. The depression has
matured him. He isn't a sophomore any more. But there he
is, holding the bag for a staff of two hundred people, under-
paying them and overworking them because he has to, and
occasionally obliged, for business reasons, to strike those
^ophomoric attitudes he no longer believes in. Pete is still
one of the Kings of Bedlam. I think some nights he prays
for a revolution.

BROADWAY is SHOCKED

A few years ago there came into an agency where I was
working a tall Westerner who had got himself a job in the
publicity department. (Yes, advertising agencies have pub-
licity departments. They are quite legitimate, although the
newspapers don't like them much.)

His name was call him Buck McMaster. He looked like a
cowboy and had been one in his youth in Oklahoma. He was
a competent, facile newspaperman and likable. The job paid
more than most newspaper jobs and it was easy. The smaller
newspapers had to like the stuff and even the desk men on
the big ones were trained to say maybe, without meaning
maybe. The stuff had to tie up with the news, of course, and

338

it had to be competently written. But Big Business is news,
and that agency was doing jobs for Big Business. It was pap for
Buck, even though they loaded his desk with plenty of as-
signments.

He was happy as a lark at first. But within a couple of
weeks that cowboy was riding high and grabbing for the
carriage of his typewriter. Looking through the glass of my
cubicle I could see him, scowling. And from time to time
I would hear him rip spoiled drafts out of his machine and
crunch them into the waste basket.

"Jesus Christ," he would bleat. "Holy Mother, what next?"

At that time some of my signed writings were appearing
in radical magazines. He must have read something of mine
and decided I was safe.

Late one afternoon he came into my cubicle and sat down.

"I'm going gaga," he said. "This stuff is terrible. Do you
mind telling me " he leaned forward and whispered "is
this a racket, too?"

I was startled. Newspapermen are supposed to be hard-
boiled. And this one was an ex-cowboy to boot, who looked
tough enough for anything.

"Do you mind telling me," I asked, "What was your last
job?"

"Sure," he said. "I was publicity man for ." He named

one of the most salacious of the Broadway producers. "It
was a lousy job you know, cheap and nasty. I'd heard about
the advertising business and decided to get into something
decent."

He seemed hurt when I laughed.

"Well," he said morosely. "Then I guess it's back to the
bright lights for me. I suppose you don't happen to know of
anything in this town a man can do and keep his self-respect?"

Buck got out finally by writing cheap fiction for the pulps.
He was and is a lot better than that. He has written honest,
sensitive fiction stories which he hasn't been able to sell. So

339

he writes more pulp fiction and is forever spoiling his busi-
ness by writing it too well. He lives in the country now,
and has got himself elected justice of the peace in his town-
ship. He's an honest judge, although he tells me the local
political pressures are considerable. He has a considerable
local reputation among the young people. When a couple
arrives at his house, wanting to get married, he first strives
earnestly to dissuade them. If he is over-ruled, he then leads
them to an idyllic spot beside a brook and reads them the
Song of Solomon. Finally, he refuses to accept a fee.

PURE GOLD

There is a very scared man huddled back of his desk in a
big Western agency. He is one of the most gifted literary
craftsmen I know. He is something of a sophisticate, and I
am confident has never believed a word of the millions of
words of advertising copy he must have written. But he
rarely says anything like that, even when drunk.

He is very scared. He is in his late fifties now, and has six
children. He is very eminent and successful, but he is scared
just the same. As the depression deepened, he saw to it that
the people in his department who stayed could be counted
upon to protect his job. Just before the bank holiday he put
ten thousand dollars in gold coins in his safe deposit box.
Every now and then he would go in and make sure that the
gold was still there.

Mr. Gentroy. The brilliant Gentroy. Once he had literary
ambitions. But he was scared. And he is old now. A little of
his light red hair is still left. His face is red, too. When you
ask him something he never commits himself. And when you
listen to him, you wonder who or what is speaking.

There was something there once. A person. Possibly an
artist. It is gone now. For years he has been .following Mr.
Goode's prescription: he has been turning people into gold.

340

Now he is gold himself. Pure gold. Only occasionally, when
he is drunk, does a small bubble of laughter or anger rise to
the surface. The refining process is never quite complete.
But Gentroy, because he was so scared, has carried it farther
than most. Gold. Pure gold.

POSTURE

Bodfish had asked the doctor about liquor, and the doctor
had shrugged. Bodfish had a leaky heart the diagnosis was
positive on that point. Yet when Bodfish had asked him
about liquor, the very Jewish, very eminent and very expen-
sive diagnostician had looked out of the window, lowered
his Oriental eyelids, and shrugged.

So Bodfish had gone directly from the doctor's office to the
speakeasy. In half an hour he was jolly. An hour later the
Good Kid came in and told him cheerfully that he was tight.
He hadn't felt tight. On the contrary, he felt himself to be
the center of an immense, serene and sober clarity. The ex-
perience was not unknown to him. The creative moment. It
was his ability to experience such moments that made him a
great advertising man. He had felt this way the night he had
thought of the Blisterine idea, which had revolutionized the
advertising of proprietary medicines. A sense of power, of
marching analysis, of kaleidoscopic syllogisms resolving into
simple, original and utterly right conclusions.

The sensation was similar, but this time his relaxed, ath-
letic mind was exploring strange territory. Himself. His life.
The curious, strained, phantasmagoric pattern of his days.

There was something he had wanted to tell the Good Kid,
but she wouldn't listen. He had^ felt a beautiful, paternal
pity for the Good Kid. It wasn't her fault, he had tried to
tell her. It wasn't his fault, either. They were both victims.
As he said it, he had put forth a hand, the wrist hairy, the
flesh around the knuckles showing the first withering of age,

and attempted to lay it upon her brow in a gesture of chaste
absolution.

The Good Kid had laughed at him. "You're drunk, B. J."
she had assured him briskly. And a little later she had gone
off with the art director, leaving him alone in the speakeasy
in a corner facing the mirror.

The lamps of the speakeasy were heavily shaded. But there
was light the mood of revelation persisted. It was as if his
flashing mind played against the mirror, and in that clear
illumination the face of Bodfish stared out at him in sharp
relief. There were two Bodfishes now. There was Bodfish, the
ad-man, posing, gesticulating in the mirror. And there was a
new, masterful, illuminated Bodfish who smiled sardonically,
fingered his cigar, and continued the inquisition of that
Mephistophelian physician.

"Do you want the truth?" the physician had asked, and
Bodfish had said he did.

Now, with the patient caught in the relentless reflection of
the mirror, Bodfish repeated the question.

"Do you want the truth?"

The lips in the mirror smiled. The head nodded. Yes, it
was to be the truth.

"Your posture is bad, Bodfish. Stand up!"

Bodfish stood up.

"Your nose is six inches ahead of your body. You're ahead
of yourself."

The face in the mirror smiled deprecatingly. Bodfish's as-
sociates had frequently made that flattering complaint. Bod-
fish was too bright. He thought too fast. His mind was so
active that

"Nonsense, Bodfish. I doubt very much that you have
ever in your life experienced the discipline of honest thought.
That head and shoulder posture what does it remind you
of?"

The face in the mirror smirked.

342

"A hawk? Really, if I am to do anything for you, well
have to dispense with a few of these bizarre illusions. There
are hawks in your business, but not many of them. As it
happens a number of my patients are advertising men. Most
of them are like yourself. Have you ever watched a mechan-
ical rabbit run around a race track pursued by whippets?"

The doctor hadn't said that not quite. But being some-
thing of a histrion, as well as a good deal of a masochist, Bod-
fish enjoyed exaggerating and refining the cruelties of the
diagnosis.

"Posture, Bodfish, is not merely a physical thing. Yours is
a moral, a spiritual disequilibrium. Moreover, you embody,
in your own psychic and physiological predicament, the
dilemma of the civilization. Its acquisitive nose is ahead of
its economic body. It is wobbling, stumbling, about to fall
on its face. Throw your chin in, Bodfish. Think! Do you
remember when you first got into the advertising business?"

Bodfish remembered.

"You were an average youth, Bodfish; perhaps a little more
sensitive than the average, and with a frail talent for writ-
ing not much, but a little. You had an idea of yourself. It
was that idea that held you together that kept your shoul-
ders back and your chin in. Posture, Bodfish, is largely a mat-
ter of taking thought. You thought a good deal of yourself
in those days. Everything that happened to you mattered. It
mattered to the degree that it affected, favorably or unfavor-
ably, your idea of yourself. Tell me, Bodfish, in those days
did you think of yourself as a charlatan, a cheat and a liar?
Did you think of yourself as a commissioned maker and
wholesaler of half-truths of outright deceptions; a degraded
clown costumed in the burlesque tatters of fake science, fake
art, and fake education, leering, cozening, bullying the crowd
into an obscene tent show that you don't even own yourself
that by this time nobody owns?"

343

The reflected face became distorted as Bodfish advanced
upon the mirror.

"Answer me, Bodfish! You wanted me to explain to you
why you've got a leaky heart, why your back hurts so you
can't sleep, why none of your office wives takes you seriously
not after the first week anyway. The answer is that you've
not only lost the idea of a society you've lost the idea of
yourself. It's silly to speak to you as a sick person. As a per-
son you've practically ceased to exist. Long ago you stuffed
yourself into the waste paper basket along with all the other
refuse of your dismal trade. You went down the freight
elevator in a big bale, back to the pulp mill. What's left is
make-believe. Why, you need three gin fizzes before you can
even take yourself seriously. You flap and rattle like a pre-
war tin lizzie. And you come to me for repairs! Tell me,
Bodfish, why should any intelligent man waste his time re-
habilitating you? Why, you're as obsolete as a Silurian liz-
ard! ... Be sensible, Bodfish, have a drink."

Bodfish had a drink.

"To your great profession, Bodfish! To your billion dollar
essential industry! Fill up, Bodfish!"

Bodfish filled his glass.

"To your historic mission, Bodfish, the rednctio ad ab-
surdum of a whole era. Drink, Bodfish!"

Bodfish drank.

"To the 40,000 ewe lambs of American advertising, who,
as the crisis deepened, poured out their last full measure of
devotion on the altar of business as usual. To the vicarious
sacrifice which history exacts of the knave, the weakling, and
the fantast. Drink, Bodfish!"

At three o'clock in the morning the push-broom of the
negro roustabout encountered an obstruction under the table
next the mirror.

"Mistah Tony!"

344

The proprietor wiped the last glass, placed it carefully on
the shelf, and leisurely emerged from behind the bar.

"Get Joe and put him in the back room," instructed the
proprietor briefly.

His partner, the ex-chorus girl, returned from padlocking
the front door.

"They tell me he's lost the Universal Founders account."

"Yes. His gal friend's quitting told me so this evening."

The proprietor frowned, opened the cash drawer and ex-
amined a check.

"Better take him off the list, Clara."

It was late afternoon of the next day before Bodfish awoke.

He lay quietly staring at the painting of Lake Como on the
opposite wall. Then he closed his eyes. There was something
he wanted to remember something that had happened in
the night. What was it? Oh, yes, posture! That was the word,
posture. Marvellous. A big idea. Never been used in advertis-
ing before. Nine out of ten have posture defects.

Sitting up in bed he extracted pencil and an envelope and
made hasty notes. That was it. A cinch. That Universal
Founders' account wasn't lost. Not by a damn sight.

He rose, scrubbed briefly at the dirty sink, and inspected
himself in the mirror. Eyes clear. Face rested. Cured!

Great thing, posture. What the doctor ordered.

Bodfish straightened himself. That's it. Head up. Chin in.
Posture.

345

CHAPTER

22

COTTERDAMMERUNC:
Advertising and the Depression

THE evolution of the American salesman hero, climaxed by
Mr. Barton's deification of the salesman-advertising man in
The Man Nobody Knows was rudely interrupted by the stock
market crash in 1929. During the depression years Mr. Bar-
ton's syndicated sermonettes struck more and more frequently
the note of Christian humility. It was an appropriate atti-
tude. For as the depression deepened it became apparent that
the ad-man could not carry the burden of his own inflated
apparatus, let alone break down the sales-resistance of the
breadlines and sell us all back to prosperity.

The ad-man tried. It is pitiful to recall those recurrent
mobilizations of the forces of advertising, designed to exor-
cize the specter of a "psychological depression": the infantile
slogans, "Forward America!" "Don't Sell America Short!";
finally, the campaign of President Hoover's Organization on
Unemployment Relief, to which the publications contributed
free space and the advertising agencies free copy.

One of these advertisements, which appeared in the Sat-
urday Evening Post issue of Oct. 24, 1931, is headed "I'll see
it through if you will." It is signed in type "Unemployed,
1931," and the presumptive speaker is shown in the illustra-
tion: a healthy, well-fed workman, smiling and tightening
his belt. The staggering effrontery of these frightened ad-men
in presuming to speak for the unemployed workers of America
can scarcely be characterized in temperate language. This

campaign signed by Walter S. Gifford, president of the
American Telephone and Telegraph Company, which was at
the same time paying dividends at the expense of the thou-
sands of workers which it had discharged and continued to
discharge, and by Owen D. Young, chairman of the Com-
mittee on Organization of Relief Resources, was designed to
kill two birds with one stone: first, to wheedle money out of
the middle classes, and second, to persuade the unemployed
to suffer stoically and not question the economic, social and
ethical assumptions on which our acquisitive society is based
and out of which the eminent gentlemen who sponsored
the campaign were making money. The particular adver-
tisement already referred to understated the volume of un-
employment about a third, and then the ineffable ad-man,
speaking through the masque of the tailor's dummy work-
man said, "I know that's not your fault, any more than it is
mine."

It didn't work. The rich gave absurdly little. And the sales
of advertised products continued to drop despite the pleading,
bullying, snarling editorials printed by the women's maga-
zines at the urgency of the business offices which saw their
advertising income dropping and their "books" becoming
every week and every month more svelte and undernourished.

Nothing worked, and pretty soon the ad-men had so much
to do, what with the necessary firing and retrenchment that
went on in the agencies and publications, that they no longer
even pretended that they could make America safe for
Hoover by advertising us out of the depression. The worst of
it was that the general public, and even the advertisers quite
evidently didn't give a whoop about the advertising business
that is to say, the publisher-broadcaster-agency structure.
Thousands of ad-men were out of work and the heartless
vaudevillians of Broadway sat up nights thinking up cracks
about this unregretted circumstance.

The doctors, the architects, the engineers, even the lawyers

347

were able to command some public sympathy. But although
from 1929 on the consumer got less and less advertising
guidance, stimulus and education, it was apparent that any-
body who had the money had no difficulty in buying what-
ever he wanted to buy. So that when apprised of the sad
plight of the ad-men, the unsympathetic layman was likely
to couple them with the bankers and remark in Broadway
parlance, "And so what?"

And so the evil days came, and the profession had no pleas-
ure in them. And the priests of the temple of advertising went
about the streets in snappy suits and tattered underwear. And
when they read their Printers' Ink in the public library they
encountered some very saddening statistical trends.

The Advertising Record Company uses a check list of 89
magazines and gives dollar values, which increased from
$190,817,540 in 1927 to $203,776,077 in 1929. By 1932 the
magazine lineage had dropped to $16,239,587 and the dollar
value to $115,342,606. Partial figures for 1933 are provided
by Advertising and Selling. They show magazine lineage to
be about 29 per cent under the 1932 figures for the first six
months of 1933. In July the descending curve began to
flatten, so that, what with beer and the NRA the September
lineage is only minus 5.88 per cent as against September,
1932 incidentally a reversal of the usual seasonal trend.

The curve of national advertising in newspapers behaves
similarly. Starting with a dollar value of $220,000,000 in
1925, it reaches a 1929 peak of $260,000,000. Then it drops
to $230,000,000 in 1930, $205,000,000 in 1931, and $160,-
000,000 in 1932. The drop continued in the early months
of 1933, but the recovery came sooner and has gone higher;
August newspaper advertising was 23.65 per cent above the
same month of the preceding year.

As might be expected, agriculture is the sore spot of the
advertising economy as it is of the economy in general. The
Advertising Record Company's figures show a slightly earlier

348

incidence of distress in this quarter. National advertising in
national farm publications faltered from $11,092,342 in 1929
to $10,327,956 in 1930, dropped suddenly to $7,775,415 in

1931, and slumped hopelessly in 1932 to $4,921,514.
Radio advertising is unique in that it shows a continuous

upward trend during the depression years up to 1933. The
combined figures of the two major chain systems, National
and Columbia, show an increase of broadcasting expenditures
by national advertisers from $18,729,571 in 1929 to $39,-
106,776 in 1932. But by April of this year radio advertising
was 42.71 per cent under the total for the same month of

1932. A reversal of this trend is indicated by the August
total which is off only 16.53 per cent as against August, 1932.
In spite of their increased income during the depression, how-
ever, the Wonder Boys of radio have managed somehow to
stay in the red NBC, for example, has yet to pay a dividend
to its common stockholders.

So much for the statistical records of the advertising in-
dustry. The summary is incomplete since it does not include
the trade press, car-cards, outdoor advertising and direct ad-
vertising. The trends, however, have been similar.

The human records during these years of the locust have
been even more depressing. Certainly, the Golden Bowl of
advertising is not broken. But it has been badly cracked, and
through that crack has leaked at least half of the 1929 per-
sonnel of the profession and, probably, a bit more than half
of the profession's 1929 income. This is merely a rough esti-
mate, since no reliable figures are available. The writer is in-
debted to a leading employment agency in the field for the
estimates here given. They are based on considerable evi-
dence plus the best judgment of an informed observer.

Advertising salaries were, of course, preposterously inflated
during the late New Era. A good run of the mill copy writer
got $150 a week, whereas a newspaper reporter of equal
competence would be lucky to get $50 a week. Practically

349

any competent artist could choose between starving to death
painting good pictures and making from $10,000 to $50,000
a year painting portraits of branded spinach, pineapple,
cheese, etc., so realistic that the publications in which they
were reproduced had to be kept on ice in order to arrest the
normal processes of nature. (The writer admits that the
artists were not solely to blame for this interesting phenom-
enom. )

The push-button boys, the high-power advertising execu-
tives, the star agency business getters and publication space
salesmen all these were similarly inflated as to salaries, and
as to their conviction of their own importance. Executive
salaries of $25,000 and $30,000 were common in 1929, and
there were even a few $50,000 a year men, not counting the
agency owners. Research directors and merchandizing ex-
perts had also begun to come in on the big money. In some
of the larger agencies, an owlish, ex-academic or pseudo-
academic type was in great demand as a front for the more
important clients. These queer birds got from $12,000 to
$40,000 a year. They specialized in the higher realms of the
advertising make-believe, being as statistical, psychological,
economico-psychological, statistical-sociological as Polonius
himself. Since there was indeed something rotten in Den-
mark, and advertising was distinctly a part of that something,
they, too, were pierced by the sword of the depression and
fell squealing behind the arras.

Eheu! Those were the happy days! Where are they now,
those Pushers of the Purple Pen, those pent-housed and
limousined "artists," those academic prime ministers in their
modern dress of double-breasted serge, those industrial stylists
and package designers, those stern, efficient, young-old, but-
ton-pushing High Priests of the Gospel of Advertising?

A few, who didn't get caught in the stock market, are
sitting and drinking in Majorca, waiting for the waters to
subside and the peak of the advertising Ararat to reappear.

350

Some are doing subsistence farming in Vermont and else-
where, with perhaps a hot dog stand as a side line.

Some of them are on the receiving end of the formula of
salesmen-exploitation which many companies have adopted
as a means of conquering the rigors of the depression. You
use your own car and your own gas trying to sell a new
gadget in a territory infested by other salesmen for the same
gadget. In two months you have sold two gadgets and your
commissions amount to $58.75. Your business expense for the
same period amounts to $79.85. That proves you're a poor
salesman.

Some of the savants are back in the fresh-water colleges
teaching the same old stuff about scientific merchandizing to
the Young Idea, from whom they carefully conceal what's
happened, assuming that they know what's happened, which
is doubtful.

A former copy writer of my acquaintance became busi-
ness manager of a radical monthly, on a theoretical salary.
Another has gone to California, where Life is Better, and the
climate more suitable for practicing his former craft of com-
mercial fiction. He wasn't fired, by the way. It was merely
that he found he had no aptitude for the brass-knuckled
rough and tumble of current advertising practice.

One hears that some of the unemployed poets in advertis-
ing are writing poetry and that some of the unemployed
novelists in advertising are writing novels. Perhaps that is one
explanation for the increased tonnage of manuscripts by
which editors, publishers and literary agents have been in-
undated.

For the so-called "creative" workers in advertising, the
adjustment has perhaps been a little easier than for the
executives, "contact men," space salesmen, etc. A relief ad-
ministrator told the writer about an advertising man who
had presented a difficult problem to her organization. He
needed money to feed his family, but he wouldn't surrender

351

his respectable address just off Park Avenue. He still hoped
to get back into the running, had a hundred "leads" and
schemes. Meanwhile, he must look prosperous, since an in-
digent, unsuccessful advertising man is a contradiction in
terms.

Many of the agencies started firing and cutting right after
the stock market crash. By the fall of 1930 wholesale dis-
charges were frequent. During the past year the havoc has
been appalling. Agencies that formerly employed six hundred
people are operating with about half that number. In the
smaller agencies the staffs have been reduced from 150 to 30,
from 30 to 8, from 16 to 4. Salaries have been cut again and
again. In some agencies there have been as many as four suc-
cessive cuts. They have hit the higher and middle brackets
hardest particularly the "creative'* staffs. The employment
agent already referred to has recently placed copy writers at
$50 and $70 a week who in 1929 were getting $10,000 and
$14,000 a year. Secretaries and stenographers have dropped
from $40 and $303 week to $18 and $15. In the entire agency
field there are perhaps a handful that have refrained from
cutting salaries or have restored cuts when business improved
for that particular agency.

Mergers have been numerous during the depression. The
earlier trend toward concentration of the business in the
hands of a comparatively few large agencies has been ac-
celerated. In the process many well-known names have dis-
appeared from the agency roster.

As to the effect of the weeding-out process on the quality
of the residual agency staffs, it may be said that a percentage
of sheer incompetents has been dropped; that a percentage of
incompetents has been retained because through social or
financial connections they controlled the placing of valuable
business; that in general, the trend has been toward a more
rigorous "industrialization" of the business, with a lower aver-
age wage scale, and a progressive narrowing of responsibility.

35*

The residual ad-men tend to be or at least to act hard-boiled.
They do what they are told, and they are told to get and
hold the business by any available means.

Competitive business is war. Advertising is a means by
which one business competes against another business in the
same field, or against all business for a larger share of the con-
sumer's dollar. The World War lasted four years. The de-
pression has lasted four years. You would expect that adver-
tising would become ethically worse under the increasing
stress of competition, and precisely that trend has been clearly
observable. But, as already pointed out, ethical value judg-
ments are inapplicable under the circumstances. Good adver-
tising is advertising which promotes the sale of a maximum of
goods or services at a maximum profit for a minimum ex-
pense. Bad advertising is advertising that doesn't sell or costs
too much.

Judged by these criteria, and they are the only perma-
nently operative criteria, good advertising is testimonial
advertising, mendacious advertising, fear-and-emulation ad-
vertising, tabloid balloon -technique advertising, effective
advertising which enables the advertiser to pay dividends to
the widows and orphans who have invested their all in the
stocks of the company. It is precisely this kind of advertis-
ing that has increased and flourished during the depression
this kind and another kind, namely, price-advertising, which
advertising men, including that ad-man at large, General
Hugh S. Johnson, view with great alarm. This brings us to a
consideration of various confused and conflicting aspects of
the New Deal which serve excellently to document the previ-
ously set forth contentions of the writer concerning the
nature of the advertising business, its systematized make-
believe, and its strategic position in the capitalist economy.

353

CHAPTER

23

NIRA:

The Ad-Man on the Job

WHEN President Roosevelt succeeded to the politically bank-
rupt Hoover Administration, it was necessary not merely to
legislate a New Deal but to sell this New Deal to the Ameri-
can People. Tribute has already been paid to the President's
extraordinary persuasiveness in his radio addresses. It was
natural that he should choose as his first lieutenant a high-
powered sales executive, General Hugh S. Johnson, who be-
came Director of the NRA.

The theory of the recovery, as outlined in the pronounce-
ments of the President, was to raise prices and wages, eliminate
cut-throat price competition, and thereby restore the solvency
of the whole capitalist fabric of production and distribution
for profit. One of the businesses that had to be rehabilitated
was the advertising business.

Speaking before the convention of the Advertising Federa-
tion of America held at Grand Rapids in June, 1933, Gen-
eral Johnson said in part:

Good advertising will become more essential than ever. It will
be in a position to help the business executive avoid those wasteful
and expensive practices in selling which so often add needless
costs to needed products. Good advertising is opposed to senseless
price cutting and to unfair competition. These are two business
evils which we hope to reduce under the new plan of business
administration.

354

Constructive selling competition will be as strong as ever, and
there will be great need for aggressive sales and advertising efforts.
The only kind of competition that is going to be lessened is the
destructive cut-throat kind of competition which harms the in-
dustry and the public as well. There should be more competition
than ever in presenting quality products to consumers, and in
selling those products. What we are going to need more than ever
is energetic, honest efforts to sell goods to people who are going
to use them. . . .

If there is one job for advertising men and women to carry
through at this moment, it is to study the implications and effects
of the industrial recovery act and then to apply their skill in assist-
ing business to gain fully from the planned results of the law.

When General Johnson addressed the Advertising Federa-
tion of America, he was speaking to the responsible heads of
the advertising business, including the owners and managers
of major publishing properties. Certainly these gentlemen real-
ized very clearly that if any deliberate deflation of advertis-
ing were included in the plans of the administration, it would
mean their bankruptcy. General Johnson understood this as
well as they did. He also must have realized acutely that the
administration could not afford to do anything of the sort,
since it is highly dependent upon press and radio support for
the execution of its program even for its continuance in
office. Hence, the wings of the Blue Eagle were spread be-
nignly over one of the most fantastically exploitative and
non-functional businesses in our whole acquisitive economy.
With this qualification, of course: "Good advertising will be-
come more essential than ever . . . Good advertising is op-
posed to senseless price cutting and to unfair competition."

General Johnson knew his press and knew his politics. As
a patriotic savior of capitalism he was convinced that the
advertising business was one egg that couldn't be broken
even to make the omelet of the New Deal. But it was impos-
sible to keep the recovery program pure, even if the President

355

had wanted to. Reform was bound to creep in. The invest-
ment bankers got it first in the Securities Act. And eventually
that advertising egg did get cracked, or at least candled. It
turned out to be Grade "C" or worse.

It was Professor Rexford J. Tugwell, Assistant Secretary of
Agriculture, who started all the trouble by insisting that the
Recovery Program should include passage of a New Pure
Food and Drugs Bill, designed to protect the health and the
pocketbook of the consumer. At this writing this bill, as re-
vised by Senator Copeland, under pressure from the proprie-
tary medicine, drug, food and advertising interests, is still be-
ing fought by these interests although most of its original
teeth have been pulled. By the time this book is published it
seems probable that the revised bill or a substitute measure
will have been passed. Since the purpose of this book is not to
analyze the legislative and other developments incident to the
New Deal but to describe the advertising business, considered
as an instrument of rule controlled and manipulated by the
American business hierarchy, we shall be content in the next
chapter with showing how and why the vitamin men, the
medicine men and especially the ad-men were successful in
beating the Tugwell Bill. The story is told in detail in the
500 page transcript of the hearings on S. B. 1944, otherwise
known as the Tugwell-Copeland Food and Drugs Bill, held
in Washington, Dec. 7 and 8, 1933. It is one of the most
fascinating and revealing documents the Government Print-
ing Office has ever issued. Reading it is a sobering experience,
even though Moliere himself could scarcely have conceived
the rich comedy of the situation. What emerges is a cross-
section of the American pseudoculture. Benjamin Franklin,
Jay Cooke, Henry Ward Beecher and Elbert Hubbard were
all there in spirit, represented by slightly burlesqued re-
incarnations in the bodies of statesmen, lawyer-lobbyists,
medicine men and ad-men. Bruce Barton didn't appear at the
hearings, but did his bit in the field by speaking against the

3J6

bill. Dr. Walter G. Campbell, Chief of the Food and Drug
Administration, did an altogether magnificent job in explain-
ing the need for the bill so that by the time he had finished
the assembled lobbyists didn't have a leg to stand on. They
did, however, have plenty of money and an effective influence
upon the daily and periodical press. In the Sept. 18, 1933, issue
of the Drug Trade News appeared the following frank state-
ment of the strategy and tactics of the United Manufacturers
of Proprietary Medicines, as generalissimoed by lawyer-lobby-
ist Clinton Robb.

The 17 Plans

1. Increase the membership of association at once to present a
united front in combating the measure.

2. Secure co-operation of newspapers in spreading favorable pub-
licity, particularly papers now carrying advertising for members of
the association.

3. Enlisting all manufacturers and wholesalers, including those
allied to the trade, and inducing them to place the facts before
their customers through salesmen, and in all other possible ways, to
secure their co-operative aid.

4. Secure the pledge of manufacturers, wholesalers, advertising
agencies and all other interested affiliates to address letters to Sena-
tors to secure their promise to vote against the measure.

5. Line up with other organizations, such as Drug Institute,
Proprietary Association, National Association of Retail Druggists
and others, to make a mass attack on bill.

6. Appointment by the President of a committee to work in
conjunction with Attorney Clinton Robb.

7. Co-operation of every member in forwarding to headquarters
newspaper clippings and all available data as basis for bulletins and
favorable publicity.

8. Co-operation of every member in doing missionary work in
home districts to arouse public to the dangers of the legislation
proposed.

357

<?. Carrying to the public by every means available, radio, news-
paper, mail and personal contact, the alarming fact that if the bill
is adopted, the public will be deprived of the right of self -diagnosis
and self -medication, and would be compelled to secure a physician's
prescription for many simple needs.

10. Arrange for conferences between Association Committee and
representatives of all other trade associations interested.

11. Enlist the help of carton, tube, bottle and box manufac-
turers.

12. Defeat use of ridicule by American Medical Association, pro-
ponents of the measure, by replying with ridicule.

13. Convince newspapers of justness of cause and educate public
to same effect.

14. Setting up publicity department for dissemination of infor-
mation.

15. Enlisting aid of Better Business Bureau in various cities.

1 6. Direct and constant contact with situation at Washington
under leadership of Attorney Robb.

17. Pledge of 100 per cent co-operation on part of every mem-
ber of the association present for continued and unremitting activ-
ity in every possible direction to defeat measure.

Note plan No. 15, the mobilizing of the Better Business
Bureaus, which are agencies set up by the organized adver-
tising business to expose and penalize dishonest and misleading
advertisers. We cannot stop here to trace the history of the
Better Business Bureau, except to point out that its criteria
of "Truth in Advertising" are the commercial criteria al-
ready discussed in an earlier chapter; further, that even these
criteria cannot be applied to the disciplining of important
advertisers or powerful advertising agencies. The internal
politics of the advertising business is realpolitik. The Better
Business Bureau can point with pride to the scalps of numer-
ous "blue-sky" stock promoters and cheap and nasty patent
medicine racketeers whom it has put out of business. But in
the nature of the case it cannot successfully hunt bigger game,

3*8

indeed it is not designed for this purpose. It is essentially a
"Goose Girl" organization which is concerned with the main-
tenance of reader confidence, with keeping the methods and
practices of the advertising profession within the tolerance
limit of an essentially exploitative traffic.

But the Tugwell Bill attacked this traffic at several vital
points : ( i ) the clause declaring a drug to be misbranded if its
labeling bears any representation, directly or by ambiguity or
inference, concerning the effect of such drug, which is con-
trary to the general agreement of medical opinion; (2) a
similar clause leveled at false and misleading advertising,
which provided that the advertisement of the drug or cosmetic
be considered false "if it is untrue, or by ambiguity or infer-
ence creates a misleading impression"; (3) the clause au-
thorizing the Secretary of Agriculture to "promulgate defini-
tions of identity and standards of quality and fill of con-
tainer for any food."

But "ambiguity and inference" is the stock-in-trade of the
advertising copy writer. And as for quality standards, it is
the recognized task of advertising to establish systematized
illusions of quality which will lift the product above the vul-
gar level of price competition.

Being thus clearly attacked, it was to be expected that the
"reform" pretensions of the advertising business would pretty
much collapse; that the profession would make a more or
less united front with the patent medicine racketeers, and
with the drug, food and cosmetic industries; that news-
papers, magazines and radio stations would either actively
fight the bill or fail to support it.

In effect that is what happened, although the more re-
spectable advertisers and publications were considerably em-
barrassed by the rough tactics of the patent medicine lobby,
and certain partial cleavages developed. At its annual conven-
tion the Association of National Advertisers failed to pass
resolutions attacking the bill, for the reason, doubtless, that

359

those advertisers who were affected slightly if at all by its
provisions felt that "reader confidence" would indeed be
somewhat rehabilitated if the patent medicine advertisers, the
"Feminine Hygiene" advertisers, etc., were obliged to pull
their punches a little. Advertising and Selling and Editor and
Publisher attempted to play fair, gave much space to the pro-
ponents of the bill and stoutly refused to "go along" with
the campaign of abuse, misrepresentation and press coercion
laid down in Mr. Robb's "17 Plans."

To meet this attack Professor Tugwell and the officials of
the Food and Drug Administration had to rely upon their
excellent and popular case, upon the support of a handful of
liberal and radical publications, which carried little or no
advertising, upon the far from active or organized support
of the medical profession, and upon the intermittent and
poorly financed help of a few women's clubs and consumer
organizations. The Food and Drug Administration had no
propaganda budget; it did, however, manage to stage its
famous "Chamber of Horrors" exhibit at the Century of
Progress and later route this exhibit to women's clubs and
other organizations which asked for it. This pathetically in-
adequate attempt to fight back was greeted by yells of rage
from the patent medicine lobby which was busy spending
money lavishly in the execution of Mr. Clinton Robb's "17
Plans." United States Senators began getting letters like the
following from Mr. Daniel A. Lundy:

My dear Senator: It would seem, if Section 6 of the Deficiency
Appropriation Act, for the fiscal year of 1919 and prior year, is
still active, Walter Campbell may well be dismissed and prosecuted
for his alleged gross violations and abuse of authority, in spending
government money without permission of the Congress for radio,
Paramount News Reel, diversion of his employees' time for selfish
purposes and other means to influence passage of unconstitutional
Tugwell-Copeland-Sirowich Food and Drug Bills.

360

Walter Campbell, it would seem, has overridden all official pro-
priety and wisdom in his alleged overt act, and no public trust or
confidence once violated, as in this case, can be restored. There seems
but one road for Congress the road in dismissing the Chief of the
F&D Department, with penalties, if substantiated.

All others who have aided and abetted in these vicious and ir-
regular proposals, whether in lending their names or in actions,
should come under the same discipline.

Honest industry and a decent public prays for a thorough and
speedy investigation and not a white-wash of an alleged crime as
despicable and deplorable as the sell-out of the "Teapot -Dome."

Mr. Lundy, as might be guessed, is a member of the Board
of Managers of the United Medicine Manufacturers Associa-
tion. He is also connected with the Home Drug Company,
against which the Food and Drug Administration has a case
pending. But the Senator didn't know this. Nor was the Food
and Drug Administration empowered to tell him unless he
specifically asked; it had no means and no power to expose
one of the most brazen and vicious lobbies that ever dis-
graced Washington. In the Nation of February 14 the writer
undertook to expose this lobby and the substance of that
article, which was entered in the record of the second hearing
by Mrs. Harvey W. Wiley.

CHAPTER

24

ALL FOR PURITY

THERE are no interested, profit-motivated lobbyists at Wash-
ington; only patriots, crusaders, guardians of our most sacred
institutions, saviors of humanity. If you doubt this, read the
transcript of the public hearings held December 7 and 8 in
Washington on the Tugwell-Copeland Food and Drug Bill. If,
after that, you are still cynical, you should read the mail the
President, General Johnson, and Postmaster Farley received
from the patriotic medicine men, vitamin men, and cosmeti-
cians whose sole concern appeared to be the welfare of the
present Administration and the NRA. The names of these
correspondents cannot be divulged, but here are a few samples
of their style:

With yourself and every other loyal citizen of the United States
endeavoring to assist in the relief of unemployment, it would seem
that any type of legislation that would retard the recovery of
business would be unfortunate at this time. Therefore, House Bill
6 no and the Copeland Bill should be given serious consideration as
their effect upon an enterprise with an annual output of over
$2,000,000 would be serious indeed. . . .

We have no objections to regulation but . . . here is no ordinary
regulator measure of the industry. Here is a bill known as the
Tugwell Bill . . . that openly demands that the Secretary of Agri-
culture in enforcement of regulations be final and absolute and
without appeal to the courts. . . . Now I'm no disgruntled manu-

362

facturer writing you; I'm quite well able to take care of myself
and have been doing it in this business for many, many years. . . .

Practically all the worth-while factors in proprietary cosmetic,
drug, food, and advertising industries are in accord that these Tug-
well measures are impossible of amendment and should be with-
drawn. . . .

I have recently been impressed with the danger to the Adminis-
tration that is resulting from the agitation created by what is known
as the Tugwell Bill. . . .

There are four main points to note about this huge cor-
respondence, of which only a few typical examples have been
excerpted: (i) that the names of most of the ready letter-
writer firms are already familiar through notices of judgment
issued by trie Food and Drug Administration at the termina-
tion of cases brought under the present inadequate law, in
Post Office fraud orders or in the Federal Trade Commission
cease-and-desist orders; (2) that the writers invoke the prin-
ciple of "recovery" as opposed to "reform" in order to defend
businesses which in most cases are demonstrably a danger
and a burden to both the public health and the public pocket-
book; (3) that they do not hesitate to misrepresent both the
nature and effects of the bill, as for example by asserting that
Administration action would not be subject to court review
although such review would be easily available to defendants
under both the original bill and the present revised Copeland
Bill; (4) that the writers, by implication, threaten the Ad-
ministration with a political headache and political defeat,
regardless of the merit of the issues involved.

The nature and methods of this lobby can best be under-
stood by examining the following "Who's Who" of the lead-
ing lobbyists. A complete list is as impossible, as would be any
attempt to estimate the expenditure, undoubtedly huge, of
the proprietary drug, food, and advertising lobby.

3*3

Frank (Cascarets) Blair. Mr. Blair represents the Proprie-
tary Association, the chief fraternal order of the patent-medi-
cine group, but even closer to his heart, one suspects, is Ster-
ling Products. This is a holding company for the manufac-
turers of such products as Fletcher's Castoria, Midol, CaldwelPs
Syrup and Pepsin, and Cascarets, a chocolate-covered trade
phenopthalein and cascara laxative recently seized by the Food
and Drug Administration. The Proprietary Association and
Mr. Blair, plus the National Drug Conference, backed the
Black Bill, written by Dr. James H. Beal, chairman of the
board of trustees of the United States Pharmacopoeia. The
Black-Beal Bill would further weaken even the present in-
adequate law, make seizures practically impossible, and per-
mit nostrum -makers to get away with murder in their
advertising. In short, it is a sheer fake.

Hon. Thomas B. (Crazy Crystals) Love. Mr. Love, a former
Assistant Secretary of the Treasury, is attorney for the Crazy
Water Company of Mineral Wells, Texas, manufacturers of
Crazy Crystals, a prominent exhibit last summer in the Food
and Drug Administration's well-known "Chamber of Hor-
rors." At the December hearings Mr. Love said, "No harm
has ever resulted, or is likely to result, from the misrepre-
sentation of the remedial or therapeutic effect of naturally
produced mineral waters," which is a brazen enough falsifi-
cation. Two kinds of harm result from such misrepresenta-
tion harm to the health of the victim who takes a dose of
horse physic under the illusion that a dose of salts is good for
what ails him; harm to the victim's pocket-book because he
paid about five times as much for that dose of salts as it was
worth.

H. M. (Ovaltine) Blackett. Mr. Blackett is president of
Blackett-Sample-Hummert, a Chicago advertising agency.
His pet account is Ovaltine, that mysterious "Swiss" drink
which puts you to "sleep without drugs" and performs many
miracles with underweight children, nursing mothers, busy

3^4

workers and old people. "Food and drug advertising," Mr.
Blackett writes to magazine and newspaper publishers, "is dif-
ferent from other classifications. It must actually sell the
product. It must put up a strong selling story strong enough
to actually move the goods off the dealers' shelves." More
briefly, Mr. Blackett believes it would be impossible to sell a
"chocolate-flavored, dried malt extract containing a small
quantity of dried milk and egg" for what it really is at
least for a dollar a can.

William P. (Jacob's Ladder) Jacobs. Mr. Jacobs is president
of Jacobs' Religious List, which would appear to represent the
alliance of the fundamentalist business and the proprietary-
medicine business. As a publishers* representative of the
"official organs of the leading white denominations of the
South and Southeast," he offers a combined weekly circulation
of 300,317 to the God-fearing manufacturers of Miller's
Snake Oil (makes rheumatic sufferers jump out of bed and
run back to work), kidney medicines, rejuvenators ("Would
you like to again enjoy life?"), contraceptives (presumably
for an equally holy purpose) , reducing agents and hair-grow-
ers. Mr. Jacobs is secretary and general manager of the Insti-
tute of Medicine Manufacturers; he is, in fact, a member of
the old Southern patent-medicine aristocracy. His father, J.
F. Jacobs, was author of a profound treatise on "The Eco-
nomic Necessity and the Moral Validity of the Prepared Medi-
cine Business."

/. Houston Goudiss. Mr. Goudiss appears to be the missing
link in the menagerie of medicine men, vitamin men, and
ad-men who crowd the big tent of the Washington lobby and
do Chautauqua work in the field. On November i6th last he
appeared before the convention of the New York State Fed-
eration of Women's Clubs, donned the mantle of the late Dr.
Harvey W. Wiley, and begged his hearers to oppose the Tug-
well Bill. He said in part:

So far as I am known to the American public, I am known as
a crusader for the better health of our people. . . . Early in my
career I came under the benign influence of the late Dr. Harvey W.
Wiley. I was privileged to support him in his work . . . Were Dr.
Wiley alive today, I am sure that he would be standing here instead
of me. And if I presume to wear his mantle, it is because I feel
that the great urgency of the situation calls upon me to do so. ...
When I was first informed that our Congress was ready to consider
a new pure food and drugs law ... I was exultant. . . . Later
when I read the proposed law . . . my heart fell with foreboding.
I recognized it as only another overzealous measure like our unhappy
Eighteenth Amendment and the Volstead Act. . . . The Tugwell
Bill is fraught with danger. . . .

About that Harvey W. Wiley mantle the widow of Dr.
Wiley, in the course of an eloquent plea for the Tugwell Bill
at the December hearing, said: "I have never heard Dr. Wiley
mention Mr. C. Houston Goudiss, and inquiry at the Depart-
ment of Agriculture discloses the fact that no correspondence
between Dr. Wiley and Mr. Goudiss between 1905 and 1911,
when Dr. Wiley resigned, is on file."

And now about Mr. Goudiss himself: He publishes the
Forecast, a monthly magazine full of vitamin chatter not un-
related to Mr. Goudiss's activities as broadcaster over Station
WOR for various and sundry food products. He is author of
Eating Vitamins and other books also of a signed advertise-
ment for Phillips' Milk of Magnesia. His Elmira speech was
promptly sent out as a press release by the Proprietary Asso-
ciation, and he also fought the Tugwell Bill over the radio.

The organizational set-up of the drug men, the food men,
the medicine men, and the ad-men is almost as complicated
as that of the Insull holding companies. At the top sits the
High Council of the Drug Institute, an association of asso-
ciations, formed originally to fight the cut-rate drug stores.
The Proprietary Association, the Institute of Medicine Manu-
facturers, and the United Medicine Manufacturers, all have

$66

booths in this big tent. The last-named organization came
right out in the open, whooping, yelling, and rattling the
wampum belt. The Food and Drug Administration knows
them well, and the public would know them better if this
department of government were authorized by law to publi-
cize its files. Here are a few of the most eminent and vocal
patriots and purity gospelers:

President J. M. (Toma Tablets) Ewing. Toma Tablets are
innocuously labeled, but advertised for stomach ulcers, The
advertising clause of the Copeland Bill is what is worrying
Mr. Ewing.

Vice President I. R. (Health Questions Answered) Black-
burn. Mr. Clinton Robb, the legal magician for the U. M.
M. A., fixed up the labels of the Blackburn products, which
rejoice in a string of notices of judgment. These products are
sold through an advertising column headed "Health Ques-
tions Answered." You write to Dr. Theodore Beck, who an-
swers the questions in this column, and the good doctor in-
forms you that one or more of the Blackburn products is good
for what ails you. It's as simple as that.

Vice President George Reese is at present slightly handi-
capped in selling venereal-disease remedies by the seizure by
the Food and Drug Administration a month ago of one of his
nostrums not the first action of this kind, judging by the
notices of judgment against this firm.

Vice President Earl E. (Syl-vette) Runner can boast a dozen
or more notices of judgment against his many products, the
most prominent of which, Syl-vette, was seized only a short
time ago. This "reducing agent" is a cocoa-sugar beverage that
keeps your stomach from feeling too empty while a diet does
the slenderizing.

D. A. (Gallstones) Lundy, of the Board of Managers of the
U. M. M. A., advertises: "Gallstones. Don't operate. You make
a bad condition worse. Treat the cause in a sensible, painless,
inexpensive way at home." But, alas, the proposed new law

367

forbids the advertising of any drug for gallstones, declaring
the disease to be one for which self -medication is especially
dangerous. Perhaps this explains Mr. Lundy's fervid letters to
Senators demanding the dismissal and prosecution of Chief
Campbell of the Food and Drug Administration on the ground
that the latter has been improperly spending the Federal Gov-
ernment's money for propaganda.

William M. (Nue-Ovo) Krause, of the membership com-
mittee of the U. M. M. A. Mr. Krause's Research Laboratories,
Inc., of Portland, Oregon, labeled Nue-Ovo as a cure for
rheumatism until 1929 when the Food and Drug Administra-
tion seized the product and forced a change of the label.
Nue-Ovo is still widely advertised in the West as a cure for
rheumatism and arthritis.

Kenneth (Vogue Powder) Muir, of the Board of Managers
of the U. M. M. A. When Mr. Muir's Vogue Antiseptic Pow-
der was seized in 1930, it was being recommended not only
for genito-urinary affections of men and women but also in
the treatment of diphtheria.

T. S. (Renton's Hydrocine Tablets) Strong, of the Board
of Managers of the U. M. M. A., is a partner in Strong, Cobb
& Company of Cleveland, pharmaceutical chemists who
manufacture products for other concerns. There are notices of
judgment against venereal-disease remedies and a contracep-
tive manufactured by them. This firm also makes Renton's
Hydrocine Tablets, a cinchophen product sold for rheuma-
tism to which, according to the American Medical Associa-
tion, many deaths have been directly traced.

C. C. (Kow-Kare) Parlin. For months now Mr. Parlin, re-
search director of the Curtis Publishing Company, assumed
much of the task of mobilizing and directing the hetero-
geneous but impassioned hosts of purity gospelers that fought
the Tugwell Bill. Mr. Parlin is a statistician, a highbrow, and
no end respectable. Moreover, he represents, indirectly at
least, the Ladies 9 Home Journal and the Country Gentleman.

368

In their February, 1934, issues both of these Curtis proper-
ties published editorials, written in language strikingly simi-
lar to Mr. Parlin's recent speeches and signed writings, to the
effect that in their advertising pages they had struggled to be
pure well, pure enough and that the new bill was just
painting the lily.

How pure is pure? The February issue of the Country
Gentleman contains advertisements of several products which
would be subject to prophylactic treatment if an effective
law against misleading advertising were passed. The Feb-
ruary issue of the Ladies' Home Journal, which says that for
more than a generation it has "exercised what we consider
to be proper supervision over all copy offered for our pages,"
contains advertisements of at least eight products whose
claims would require modification if the proposed bill became
law. The Ladies 9 Home Journal's "pure-enough" list includes
Pepsodent, Fleischmann's Yeast, Ovaltine, Listerine, Vapex,
Musterole, Vicks Vapo Rub, and Pond's creams. In addition
to some of the foregoing, the Country Gentleman stands back
of advertisements of Ipana, Toxite, Sergeant's Dog Medicines,
Bag Balm, and Kow-Kare. Concerning the last-named prod-
uct, the fact-minded veterinary of the Food and Drug Ad-
ministration comments as follows:

This used to be sold as Kow-Kure, which purported to be a
remedy for contagious abortion, until trouble threatened with the
Pure Food and Drug Administration. No drug or combination of
drugs has any remedial value in treating contagious abortion. The
danger of these nostrums is that the farmer relies upon them.

There is one obvious lack in the foregoing list of purity
gospelers. It includes no women. We therefore hasten to pre-
sent Gertrude B. Lane, editor of the Woman's Home Com-
panion.

In the Woman's Home Companion's "index of products

3*9

advertised," the statement is made that "the appearance in
Woman's Home Companion is a specific warranty of the
product advertised and of the integrity of the house spon-
soring the advertisement." Why, then, did Miss Lane oppose
the bill? Was she alarmed by the fact that the Woman's Home
Companion publishes as pure some of the same misleading
advertisements that appear in the Ladies' Home Journal, al-
ready referred to, and that would be embarrassed by the
advertising provision of the Copeland Bill? It is a great in-
dustry: women editors, publication statisticians, ad-men, vita-
min men, medicine men, cosmeticians, all in the same boat
and rowing for dear life against a rising tide of public opinion
which demands that this grotesque, collusive parody of manu-
facturing, distributing and publishing services be compelled
to make some sort of sense and decency no matter how much
deflation of vested interests is required.

370

CHAPTER

25

CALL FOR MR. THROTTLEBOTTOM

THE inevitable conflict between the idea of capitalist "re-
form" and the idea of capitalist "recovery" emerged most
sharply in the drive for commodity standards initiated by the
more liberal members of Mr. Roosevelt's official family. These
liberals loudly denounced as "Reds" by the patent medicine,
drug and food lobby achieved a somewhat insecure footing
in the Consumers' Advisory Board of the NRA and in the
Department of Agriculture under the leadership of Assistant
Secretary Tugwell.

It seems clear that in the beginning the Consumers' Ad-
visory Board of the NRA and the Consumers' Counsel of the
AAA were conceived of as decorative ingredients, designed to
float around harmlessly in the otherwise strictly capitalist
alphabet soup of the New Deal. Under no circumstances were
they supposed to challenge the rule of business as administered
by the Industrial Advisory Board, backed by the Trade Asso-
ciations and the Chambers of Commerce. General Johnson's
job was to ride herd on the unregenerate forces of Big Busi-
ness and induce them, by alternate threats and pleadings, to
save themselves and the country.

It was a tough assignment, and not the least of General
Johnson's embarrassments was the disposition of the Con-
sumers' Advisory Board and Professor Tugwell's group in the
Department of Agriculture to clarify and fortify the soup of

3/1

the New Deal with some stronger functional plans and pro-
grams.

The first blow-off came in the summer, when Professor
Ogburn, of the University of Chicago, resigned his appoint-
ment to the Consumers' Advisory Board on the ground that
a price- and wage-raising program, unregulated by a statisti-
cal reporting service, was dangerous, and that he had neither
authority nor funds to establish such a statistical control.
This was followed by mutinous murmurs from the remaining
members of the Consumers' Advisory Board to the effect that
their carefully prepared and devasting briefs in behalf of
the consumer frequently got no further than General John-
son's desk; further, that Charles Michelson, sitting at the
publicity bottle-neck of the NRA, saw to it that the press
got only such denatured releases from the Consumers' Ad-
visory Board as would not disturb the equanimity of the
dominant business interests.

What the Consumers' Advisory Board and Professor Tug-
well's group were trying to do, of course, was to prevent the
American people, as consumers, from being ground between
the lag of wages behind the increase in prices this trend
being more and more apparent as the NRA codes, with their
open or concealed price-fixing provisions, went into effect.
The difficulty was that the consumer was a somewhat novel
and unsubstantial entity in the New Deal economics. Like
Mr. Throttlebottom, in "Of Thee I Sing," he was the man
nobody knows, although it was precisely he whom business
was theoretically set up to serve. If the Labor Advisory Board
had wished to do so, it might well have contended that labor
and the consumer are substantially identical. But it was ap-
parent from the beginning that the Labor Advisory Board
represented not the rank and file of labor, but the American
Federation of Labor officialdom, which was if anything less
radical than Big Business itself.

Hence the Consumers' Advisory Board was without allies

37*

at Washington and without the support of an organized
pressure group outside Washington. One may doubt that the
Chairman of the CAB, Mrs. Mary Harriman Rumsey, had
any notion of the political dynamite which any serious at-
tempt to discharge the ostensible functions of the board
would explode. But on the board were Dr. Robert Lynd,
co-author of Middletown and author of a penetrating study
of the economics of consumption contributed to Recent Social
Trends, Dr. Walton Hamilton, Yale economist, and author
of an iconoclastic dissenting opinion embodied in the Report
of the Committee on the Costs of Medical Care, and Dr.
James Warbasse, chairman of the Board of the Co-operative
League. And the staff of the CAB, headed by Dexter M.
Keezer, formerly of the Baltimore Sun, assayed a rather high
degree of sophistication both as to economics and politics.
For months both the board and its staff were consistently
rebuffed and slighted by General Johnson, and their press
releases were carefully censored by Publicity Director Michel-
son. But they continued to submit briefs at code hearings, and
these briefs, although largely disregarded, kept the issues alive.
And in connection with the hearings on the Tugwell-Copeland
Pure Food and Drug Bill, there came another blow-off.

One of the most loudly mouthed charges of the patent
medicine lobby was that the Tugwell Bill was "anti-NRA",
in that it would embarrass the activities of nostrum makers,
and reduce the income of newspapers, magazines and broad-
casters which sold advertising space and time on the air to
these nostrum makers. In the middle of the hearings, Dr.
Lynd was called over from the Consumers' Advisory Board
to answer this charge.

Apparently it had never occurred to the assembled medi-
cine men, drug men, food men and cosmeticians, that the
Consumers' Advisory Board could be anything but the cus-
tomary make-believe with which business-as-usual cloaks its
simple acquisitive motivations. Hence the consternation of

373

these lobbyists as Dr. Lynd proceeded deftly and suavely to
invoke the pale ghost of the ultimate consumer to bring Mr.
Throttlebottom to life.

"Do you see what I see?'* said the ad-men to the patent
medicine men. And the drug men, the cosmeticians, the vita-
min men of the food industry, and the Fourth Estate all
chimed in on a chorus of denunciation that became more
and more hysterical as the hearings proceeded.

They saw that the drive of the Consumers' Advisory Board
of the NRA to get consumer representation on the Code
Authorities and quality standards inserted in the codes, the
effort of the Consumers' Counsel of the AAA (headed by
Dr. Fred C. Howe) to insert quality standards in the food
processing and other agreements which it was then nego-
tiating, and the controls and penalties embodied in the Tug-
well Bill, especially the quality standards provisions, were all
co-ordinate elements in the attempt of the President's left-
wing advisers to do right by Mr. Throttlebottom, Mrs.
Throttlebottom and the children.

From the point of view of business-as-usual, this senti-
mentalism about the consumer is the sin against the holy
ghost, nothing less. Business, especially the interlocked drug,
cosmetic, food and advertising businesses, is organized to do
Mr. Throttlebottom right, and the difference is more than a
matter of phrasing.

Amidst audible grinding of teeth by the assembled ad-men,
Dr. Lynd argued from the premises of "quality merchandise,"
"service" and "truth in advertising" to which Printers' Ink
and other organs of the advertising business have long pro-
claimed allegiance. Today, he pointed out, in view of the elab-
orate fabrication of commodities, the widespread use of
synthetic materials and current packaging processes, fair
competition, the avowed objective of the NRA, must include
both quality competition and price competition. For example,
the AAA had found that the milk agreements, in order to

374

quote price at all, had also to quote butter fat. In nearly
every line of merchandizing, a similar need exists for quality
standards on which to base price competition. In fact, some
of the producers and growers, such as the citrus fruit, rice
millers, and cling-peach canners, had actually asked for qual-
ity grades in the AAA agreements.

The object of the NRA, continued Dr. Lynd, is to increase
net buying power, which means that it must not only in-
crease wages but stop losses through substandard buying. Both
government and industry avoid such losses by buying on
specification. Should not consumers the 30,000,000 families
who in 1929 spent 60 per cent of the national income over
retail counters know what they are buying? Under the New
Deal, labor, the consumer and government are recognized as
co-partners in American industry. The proposed Food and
Drug Bill, like the demand for quality standards in the re-
covery codes, represents a simple and necessary aid to the
isolated consumer in his difficult and largely helpless effort
to compete on an equal footing with the massed resources
of industry.

Note how carefully Dr. Lynd kept within the theoretical
zone of agreement. None the less the ad-men and their allies
lost no time in putting him on the spot. The December I4th
issue of Printers' Ink. headlined a mangled version of his state-
ment: "Opposes NRA, SAYS Lynd", and in the Dec. 2ist
issue Mr. Roy Dickinson, president of Printers' Ink, declared:

... it is my firm belief that Professor Lynd's plans in the Con-
sumers' Advisory Board, in connection with the Consumers' Board
of the AAA, are a definite threat to the success of the whole NRA
program. His scheme of attempting at this time to change the whole
system of distribution of trade-marked, advertised merchandise, is a
distinct menace to the whole industrial machine out of which wages,
profits and government taxes must come. Both President Roosevelt
and General Johnson have publicly expressed themselves that in-

375

creased advertising of quality branded merchandise is an integral
and essential part of the whole recovery program. Professor Lynd
. . . would attack over a wide front the whole system on which
not only advertising but profits depend. Which viewpoint is truly
representative of the Administration attitude? It is time that adver-
tisers, publishers and all other industries dependent on advertising
were told what they may expect, and get ready to fight for their
existence if the Lynd viewpoint is representative.

One gathers from this that Mr. Throttlebottom just
mustn't know too much, and that any attempt to inform
him must be scotched before it starts. So Mr. Dickinson
called out the advertising mob, and with similar warning
tocsins, the medicine men called out their macabre guerrillas.
The impression one gains from reading the trade press during
this period is much like that made by the final reel of a
gangster melodrama, in which the good-bad gangsters draw
their rods and "blast their way out." This ferocity becomes
understandable when we add up what was at stake.

It has been roughly estimated that about $350,000,000 a
year was at stake for the advertising business alone. This
money is paid by advertisers, chiefly through advertising
agencies which collect commissions, to newspaper and maga-
zine publishers, broadcasters, car-card and direct by mail
companies for the advertising of foods, drugs and cosmetics
theoretically designed to inform and instruct Mr. Throttle-
bottom, eliminate his halitosis, pep him up with vitamins, and
otherwise make him a better and more popular fellow.

But we have already seen that modern advertising repre-
sents not so much a competitive selling of goods and services
as a competitive manufacture of consumption habits, the tech-
nique of this manufacture being essentially a technique of
"creative psychiatry." What was attacked by the Tugwell
Bill, and even more, by the attempt to embody quality stand-
ards in the codes, was this enterprise in "creative psychiatry,"

and the largely irrational and un-economic consumption
habits which advertisers manufacture and capitalize. In Recent
Social Trends, Dr. Lynd notes that the Maxwell House Coffee
habit of the American people was bought in 1928 for
$42,000,000, and the Jell-O habit in 1925 for $35,000,000.
The asking price for the Listerine habit and the "Crazy
Crystal" habit would also doubtless be impressive if we knew
them.

When the ad-men, the food men, and the drug men howl
about the brain trust's attack on "the whole system on which
not only advertising but profits depend," that is the system
they are howling about, and the loudness of the howl is
directly proportioned to the size of the howler's stake in the
matter. The capitalized claims of the food, drug and cosmetic
advertisers upon the creatively psyched Mr. Throttlebottom's
shrinking dollar would probably run into billions if accu-
rately computed. The stake of the advertising business, other-
wise known as the newspaper, magazine and broadcasting
business, is smaller, but even more indispensable. Newspapers
and magazines derive about two thirds of their income from
advertisers, and somewhere between 40 per cent and 50 per cent
of this advertising income is contributed by the food, drug, pro-
prietary medicine and cosmetic advertisers. Naturally the pub-
lishers and broadcasters and their allies want this creative
psyching of Mr. Throttlebottom to go right on. Naturally,
when they contemplate what would happen if quality stand-
ards were systematically introduced into the codes, they be-
come hysterical and incoherent.

In contrast, the functionalists in Washington have been
almost excessively lucid. In fact, one fears that for all their
suavity and sweet reasonableness, they have made themselves
all too clear. For example, they sponsored the work of a com-
mittee, headed by Dr. Lynd, which has recommended the
establishment of a Consumers' Standards Board under the
joint control of the Consumers' Advisory Board of the NRA

377

and the Consumers' Counsel of the AAA, with a technical
director, and a technical staff of commodity experts and an
interdepartmental advisory committee drawn from Federal
Bureaus. The budget asked for provided $65,000 for the first
year for administrative expenses, plus $250,000 for research
and testing. Dr. Lynd's report quotes that devastating sen-
tence from the impeccable Hoover's 1922 report as Secretary
of Commerce:

The lack of ... established grades and standards of quality adds
very largely to the cost of distribution because of the necessity of
buying and selling upon sample and otherwise, and because of the
risk of fraud and misrepresentation and consequently larger margins
of trading.

Still keeping on the safe, sane and conservative territory of
economic and technical truisms, Dr. Lynd's report goes on
to quote a 1930 report of the Bureau of Standards:

Producers are experts in their own commodity fields, but seldom
does the consumer get the full benefit o this knowledge. Under
present conditions this group knowledge is suppressed and the tend-
ency is all too frequent to give the buyer merely what he asks for.

Moreover, as F. J. Schlink, director of Consumers' Research,
points out in his "Open Letter to President Roosevelt," "it is
impossible for a private consumer to secure access to the im-
mensely valuable findings of the Bureau of Standards, paid
for in every major respect by general taxation of consumers"
In this letter Mr. Schlink urges a Department of the Con-
sumer, with Cabinet representation and equal status with
other Federal Departments. But even the less sweeping recom-
mendations of Dr. Lynd's committee were calculated to freeze
the blood of the embattled ad-men, drug men, cosmeticians,
vitamin men, etc. According to Dr. Lynd, the standards pro-
mulgated by the Consumers' Board would not stop at the

3/8

point at which the commercial standards of the Bureau of
Standards must now stop, i.e., at the type of standards to
which 65 per cent of the industry is ready to agree, but
would go on beyond this to a thoroughly satisfactory set of
consumer grades and labels. Past experience has shown that
the official promulgation of definite consumer standards, even
though they go beyond current practice, operates as a norm
to which competitive business tends to approximate.

It requires but little imagination to see that what is here
envisaged is a fundamental reorganization of distribution in
the direction of function. This would entail a huge deflation
of the vested interest of advertisers, and of the advertising
business, in the exploitation of the American consumer; also
huge economies in both production and distribution.

Even poor old Throttlebottom should be able to see this if
there were any way of getting the word to him. There isn't,
for the reason that our instruments of social communication,
the daily and periodical press, the radio, are in effect the adver-
tising business.

Anybody who wants to fight Mr. Throttlebottom's battles
in America had better hire a hall or write a book. Advertising
is the Sacred and Contented Cow of American journalism.
Any irresponsible naturalist who attempts to lead that cow
into the editorial office of any advertising-sustained American
publication is greeted by hoots of derision. The writer knows,
because he has tried. Here are a few typical hoots:

This is an admirable article. Why don't you hire a hall somewhere
in the Bronx and read it to a lot of people?

This subject is the Sacred Cow herself and you know it damned
well. Yet you seem to want old Bossie to commit hara-kiri just
because she's not a virgin. And what would happen to the kiddies
then, including yours truly? Sure, I know: man does not live by
bread alone. There is also butter. I see I've got to teach you the facts

379

of life all over again, starting with the bees and the flowers. Mean-
while, as one professor of animal husbandry to another, go sit on a
cactus.

Sorry that this article is not adapted to our present needs. Have
you any child's verse?

380

CHAPTER

26

CONCLUSION:
Problems and Prospects

"THERE is nothing the matter with advertising," Bruce
Barton once protested, "that is not the matter with business
in general."

Since advertising is, in the end, merely a function of busi-
ness management, Mr. Barton's statement is true, broadly
speaking. It might be added that there is nothing the matter
with business that is not the matter with the professions;
also, that there is nothing the matter with business and the
professions except that they are obsolete as practiced under
the limiting conditions of an obsolete capitalist economy.
Finally, there is nothing the matter with the machine, with
industry, except that its productive forces cannot be re-
leased, and its dehumanizing effects controlled, under a profit
economy.

All these qualified acquittals must be rendered lest the
edge of criticism seems to bear too sharply and too invidiously
upon the ad-man. Invidiousness is, of course, the bread of
life in a competitive capitalist society. It is inevitable, in a
fragmented civilization, that the fragments should quarrel.
It is curiously unsatisfying for a man to be honorable and
respectable in the sight of God. No, his sense of virtue and
status must be fortified by the conviction that he is more
honorable, more respectable than other men.

I have been greatly amused, more than once, by the com-
placent naivetes of architects, engineers, doctors, dentists,

3 8r

"pure" scientists, and "objective" social scientists, who were
quite prepared to agree with me that advertising is a very
dirty business. They regarded me, apparently, as a reformed
crook who was prepared, like a mission convert, to testify
concerning the satanic iniquities that I had put behind me.
I have noticed that my replies tend to chill the sympathetic
interest of such people. I say, first, that I have not wholly
reformed. Since I intend to maintain myself economically
in an exploitative economy while it lasts, I expect to enjoy
the luxury of integrity in strict moderation. I say, second,
that I am not interested in pouring invidious moral and
ethical comfort into their pots by telling them how black my
particular kettle undoubtedly is.

This invidiousness, these differential judgments, came to
the surface with a rush when, in the aftermath of the 1929
stock market crash, the magazine Ballyhoo was launched.
This development, revealing as it did the catastrophic col-
lapse of "reader-confidence" in advertising, deserves some
detailed consideration.

Whereas the stock in trade of the ordinary mass or class
consumer magazine is reader-confidence in advertising, the
stock in trade of Ballyhoo was reader-disgust with advertis-
ing, and with high-pressure salesmanship in general. Initially
the magazine carried no paid advertisements. It directed its
slapstick burlesque primarily at the absurdities of current
advertising. By October, 1931, its circulation had passed the
million and a half mark and a score of imitators were flood-
ing the news stands.

The editor of Ballyhoo, Mr. Norman Anthony, was for-
merly one of the editors of Life, and had at various times
vainly urged that humorous weekly advertising medium to
bite the hand that fed it by satirizing advertising. The stock
market collapse, and the consequent reaction against super-
salesmanship of all kinds, gave Mr. Anthony his opportunity,
which he seized in realistic commercial fashion.

382

In style, Ballyhoo is a kind of monthly Bronx Cheer, bred
out of New Yorker by Captain Billy's Whizhang. It expresses
the lowest common denominator of sterile "sophistication,"
and it is still successful, although its circulation, at last re-
ports, had dropped to approximately half of its 1931 peak.
And for at least two years it has taken advertising advertis-
ing designed to sell goods, although adapted to the pattern
of Ballyhoo's burlesque editorial formula.

What had apparently happened was this: the frantic ex-
cesses of the ad-man in the production of customers by
"creative psychiatry" had created a new market in which
Mr. Anthony established a pioneering vested interest. This
new market consisted of a widespread popular demand to
have advertising burlesqued. Hence Ballyhoo became what
might be called an enterprise in tertiary parasitism. In the
present period of capitalist decline, business, as Veblen has
shown, parasites on the creative forces of industry. Adver-
tising, as the writer has tried to show in this book (c.f. the
chapter on "Beauty and the Ad-Man") parasites to a con-
siderable degree on business. Ballyhoo, in turn, parasites on
the grotesque, bloated body of advertising.

Mr. Anthony's enterprise is, of course, strictly commercial.
When, after its initial success, the owners of the magazine
desired to two-time their readers in the conventional manner
of publishing-as-usual, it is reported that Mr. Anthony at
first objected. But he was over-ruled, and in due course an
advertisement appeared in Printers' Ink offering advertising
space in Ballyhoo.

Without serious injustice the sales talk of Ballyhoo's adver-
tising manager may be paraphrased as follows:

"Advertisers: Buy space in Ballyhoo. Of course we bur-
lesque you and shall continue to do so, whether you buy space
in the magazine or not. But these burlesques don't hurt your
business. They help it. True, the saps laugh, but they also
buy. Think of it! A mob of a million and a half saps, laugh-

383

ing and buying! Here they are, packaged and ready to deliver.
How much do you offer?"

After this, the hostility with which many advertisers and
many advertising-supported publications had regarded Bally-
hoo began to subside. What if Mr. Anthony's publication was,
in a sense, a parasitic enterprise? He was smart. Ballyhoo had
got away with it. And forthwith they proceeded to imitate
him.

More and more, advertising began to step out of its part and
kid itself. The single column, cartoon-illustrated campaign
for Sir Walter Raleigh Smoking Tobacco is an early example
of this trend. The early copy, particularly, was an obvious
burlesque of the Listerine halitosis-shame copy. Other adver-
tisers picked up the idea, especially radio advertisers. Ed
Wynn's kidding of Fire Chief gasoline is an excellent example
of the application of burlesque to the production of customers.
More and more, it is the fashion to make radio sales talk al-
legedly more palatable by infecting the whole program with
burlesque advertising asides.

Even the preview advertising in the motion picture theatres
is beginning to betray a similar infection. For example, the
preview promotion of George White's Scandals consisted of
a genuinely amusing satire of the hackneyed extravagances
of motion picture advertising. The Jewish comedian who
played the role of assistant impresario was sternly forbidden
by Mr. White to use the words "stupendous," "gigantic" and
"colossal" in describing the wonders of the new show. Driven
to desperation by this cruel stifling of commercial enthu-
siasm, the comedian threatened to shoot himself, and did so.
His dying words are: "George White's Scandals is a stupen-
dous, gigantic, and colossal show."

It is contended by the broadcasters, and doubtless also by
the movie producers, that this burlesque sales promotion takes
the curse out of sales talk, and this is probably true to a
degree. But the prevalence of the trend gives rise to certain

384

ominous suspicions. In every decadent period, satire and
burlesque tend to become the dominant artistic forms. When
the burlesque comedian mounts the pulpit in the Church of
Advertising, it may be legitimately suspected that the edifice
is doomed; that it will shortly be torn down or converted to
secular uses.

Confirmation of this suspicion appears in the current role
of the advertising trade press, indeed of the trade press in
general. The writer has had occasion to note that his con-
tributions on the subject of advertising were not welcomed
by consumer publications supported by advertising. In con-
trast, the trade press has given space to forthright radical
attacks upon the advertising business both by the writer and
by other critics of advertising such as Dr. Robert Lynd,
F. J. Schlink and others.

This is less surprising than it might seem at first sight.
Both Advertising and Selling and Printers 9 Ink have at first
times built their circulations by crusading for "truth in ad-
vertising," the prohibition of bought-and-paid-for testimo-
nials, and other items of pragmatic advertising morality. More-
over, their readers want to know what the dastardly enemies
of advertising are doing and thinking, and who is in a better
position to tell them than these very miscreants themselves?

This brings us to a consideration of the agitation for gov-
ernment grading of staple products, which is the chief threat
by which the advertising business is now menaced. It met
and defeated this threat by deleting the standards clause from
the original Tugwell Bill. But the same threat popped up at
every code hearing and in Dr. Lynd's report urging the
establishment of a Consumers' Standards Board, which was
followed by F. J. Schlink's more sweeping demand for a
Department of the Consumer with representation in the
Cabinet.

To defeat the raid of the New Deal reformers on the adver-
tising business, the food, drug, cosmetics and advertising

385

interests concentrated in Washington a lobby reliably esti-
mated to be from three to four times as big as any other
Washington lobby in history. Yet in spite of this huge effort
the Copeland Bill, after successive revisions by the Senate
Commerce committee, emerged with a number of its smaller
teeth still intact, and conceivably it may be passed by the
time this book appears.

An ironic aspect of the matter was the dual role played by
Senator Copeland, as broadcaster for Fleischmann's Yeast
and Nujol, and as sponsor of a bill which would, if passed,
have definitely limited the advertising activities of his com-
mercial employers. On March 3ist, Arthur Kallet, Secretary
of Consumers' Research, who, with F. J. Schlink, had ably
and energetically defended the consumer interest in Wash-
ington in connection with the Tugwell and Copeland Bills,
the censorship and suppression of the Consumers' Advisory
Board, etc., signed a circular letter urging the defeat of the
emasculated Copeland Bill and the mobilizing of consumer
support of the Consumers' Research Bill (H.R. 8313).
Enclosed was the following statement by the Emergency Con-
ference of Consumer Organizations.

"The Fleischmann Yeast Company, probably to an extent greater
than almost any other national advertiser, would be affected ad-
versely by the original Tugwell Food and Drug Bill. This bill has
been twice revised by Senator Royal S. Copeland, who is employed
by the Fleischmann Yeast Company at a high fee in connection
with its weekly advertising broadcast.

"The original Tugwell Bill was far too weak to afford adequate
consumer protection, and the Copeland-revised Bill is so much
weaker from the consumer viewpoint that it should be thrown
out entirely and new legislation substituted. This cannot be ac-
complished unless it is driven home to the public that there is
probably only one man in Congress who is and has been employed
by manufacturers of dubious drug products, and that this person
has, for some curious reason, been placed in charge of food and

386

drug regulatory legislation. The twice revised bill shows that Dr.
Copeland has taken excellent advantage of the opportunity thus
afforded him to emasculate the original bill.

"The Tugwell Bill was introduced by Dr. Copeland at the last
session of Congress. It was turned over to a sub-committee of the
Senate Interstate Commerce Committee (where consumer-protec-
tive legislation certainly does not belong). The sub-committee con-
sisted of Senator Copeland as chairman, Senator McNary (a fruit
grower who would also be adversely affected by the bill) and Sena-
tor Hat tie Caraway. This sub-committee held public hearings early
in December. During the two-day hearings, Senators Copeland and
McNary's antagonism to the best features of the bill was manifest.
Moreover, while representatives of the manufacturers whose fraudu-
lent and dangerous activities were to be controlled were given
every opportunity to attack the proposed bill, not a single consumer
was given a hearing until within two hours of the close of the
session. Senator Copeland's commercial connections were pointed
out by representatives of Consumers' Research, and new hearings
under an impartial chairman were demanded, but this demand was
ignored. It is noteworthy that at the end of the first day's session,
Dr. Copeland went from the hearings to a broadcasting studio to
speak on behalf of Fleischmann's Yeast.

"The Senator is now and has in the past been employed by other
advertisers who would be adversely affected by the Tugwell Bill,
among them the Sterling Products Company, and the makers of
Nujol.

"The broadcasts for Fleischmann's Yeast were begun after the
Senator introduced the Tugwell Bill. For a Senator to accept com-
pensation from an organization affected by pending legislation is a
violation of a criminal law, if there is any intent to affect the
legislation. While intent cannot in this case be proved, there is
clearly a violation of the spirit of the law."

Supplementing this statement, it may be noted that a busi-
ness organization known as the Copeland Service, Inc., oc-
cupies the office at 250 W. j/th Street adjoining the office of
Senator Copeland. The president of this organization is Mr.

387

Ole Salthe, who in an interview with the writer on April 5th
undertook to describe the nature of this business. A brief
advertising folder issued by Copeland Service, Inc., offers the
following services:

Laboratory Service

Including chemical and bacteriological examinations. Clinical
and biological tests, particularly in relation to the improvement
of present products or the development of new products.

Radio Programs and Lectures

Dr. Royal S. Copeland and a staff of experienced radio speakers
are available to manufacturers of meritorious food and drug prod-
ucts. These speakers can talk authoritatively on health, food, diet
and nutrition, and insure broadcasts that are interesting and pro-
ductive of sales.

Labels and Printed Matter

Wide experience in the revision and preparation of labels and
printed matter concerning claims made for food and drug products
so as to conform to municipal, State and Federal Laws.

Special Articles

Relating to health, food, diet and nutrition written in a popular
style for general distribution.

Market and Field Surveys

Staff of experienced investigators in the food and drug industries
are available.

Dr. Salthe was for twenty years in the employ of the New
York City Department of Health, being director of the di-
yision of foods and drugs when he retired in 1924. In 1925
he became president of Copeland Service, Inc., with which
Royal S. Copeland Jr. is also now connected. Dr. Salthe de-
clared that aside from broadcasting services for Fleischmann's
Yeast and Stance, makers of Nujol and Cream of Nujol,

388

Copeland Service, Inc., had no clients. Did I know of any
prospects? Dr. Sal the earnestly denied any connection what-
ever between the Senator's sponsorship of the food and drug
bill and his role as a radio artist for Yeast and Nujol. Cope-
land Service, Inc., he said, was trying to put on a sustaining
program over N.B.C. stations in which the Senator would
give "constructive educational talks on food buying, includ-
ing the mentioning of worthy products."

Consumers of foods, drugs and cosmetics are invited to
decide what is wrong with this picture and to extract what-
ever wry amusement they can from it.

Obviously, neither the emasculated Copeland Bill, nor the
original Tugwell Bill, nor even the Consumers' Research Bill
represent a direct functional approach to the economic and
social problems involved, because no such approach is pos-
sible within the framework of the capitalist economy. All
that is possible is to set up more and more rigid legal and
administrative controls over the exploitative activities of
business. The Consumers' Research Bill goes the limit in this
direction. Under its provisions manufacturers of drugs and
cosmetics, and of food products potentially dangerous to
health, would be licensed and bonded; only approved prod-
ucts could be manufactured; all labels and advertising claims
would have to be approved by a board of experts.

The bill is well calculated to freeze the blood of the ad-
men, drug men, vitamin men and cosmeticians. Incidentally,
it constitutes an excellent reductio ad absurdum of the whole
idea of progress by reform, capitalist planning, etc. Obviously,
it would be much simpler to socialize pharmacy, medicine
and the production and distribution of foods, and, also ob-
viously, no such socialization could be achieved without a
social revolution.

The most serious challenge to advertisers, and to the ad-
vertising business is, of course, embodied in the agitation for
government grading conducted by the Consumers' Advisory

389

Board, the Consumers' Counsel of the AAA, and from the
outside by Consumers' Research. Here, too, the maximum
result to be attained within the framework of the capitalist
economy would still leave untouched the major contradictions
of capitalism. The agitation is none the less important and
fruitful. The demand for government grading of consumers'
goods cannot be successfully argued against, even from the
premises of competitive capitalism. The promulgation of
quality standards and their control would be necessary gov-
ernment functions in any economy. Significantly, the agita-
tion for standards has brought to light serious cleavages
between the vested interests affected.

Between the manufacturers and the consumer stand the
big distributors, the mail order houses, the department stores,
and the chain stores. They tend increasingly to sell house
products rather than advertised brands. They represent the
more nearly efficient and functional agencies of distribution
under capitalism. They are powerful, and they object to
being squeezed by manufacturers, either through high prices
or lowered standards.

In the course of General Johnson's field day for critics
last March, Irving C. Fox, secretary of the National Retail
Dry Goods Association, in addition to protesting against
price rises, revealed that within a week or two after the codes
went into effect, with provisions prohibiting returns after
five days, the quality of merchandise became much lower
than prior to the adoption of these provisions. Chain store,
mail order and department store buyers, and buyers for
municipal, State and Federal departments, have been, in all
probability, the most effective allies of the Consumers' Ad-
visory Board in the fight against high prices and lowered
standards. Not that the consumer standards movement has
got anywhere to date. In one of the reports of the Consumers'
Advisory Board, Prof. Robert Brady testified that

390

"Of the first 220 codes, which cover the most important Amer-
ican industries, only about 70 contain clauses having anything to
do with standards, grading or labeling. Most of these clauses are
absolutely worthless from the point of view of the consuming
interests. In some cases they are so vague that they permit anything
and condone everything. In some cases they are positively vicious in
that they may be used covertly for price fixing purposes and even
practically to compel the lowering of quality. In four cases, for
example, the code authority is instructed to declare that the giving
of guarantees beyond a certain point is an unfair trade practice,,
whereas most of the industries affected have long been accustomed
to give and live up to guaranties far beyond these points."

For confirmation of this statement we have only to turn
to the Journal of Commerce for April 13, 1934, from which
the following quotation is taken:

"Substitution of lower quality for standard products continues
on a substantial scale and prevents consumers from realizing the
full import of price increases that have taken place.

"Retail prices in many lines have been arrived at after study
and experience with mass buying habits. Merchants conclude,
therefore, that they must preserve these established price levels
even at the cost of sacrificing quality, to maintain their physical
volume of sales.

"This reasoning has been found so practical and effective in many
instances that manufacturers of branded and trade-marked mer-
chandise have been adopting the same policy in increasing numbers,
it is reported. In some cases, manufacture of the previous standard
quality is being given up altogether. In some other instances goods
meeting the old specifications are being sold under a new branded
name at a higher price."

2.

In the light of all these developments, the advertising pro-
fession is bound to contemplate its future with alarm and

391

foreboding. Where business in general fears the still remote
prospect of social revolution, the advertising business faces
deflation through the inevitable and already well-begun proc-
esses of industrial cartelization, of capitalist "rationalization,"
which here, as in Italy, Germany, and in England are bound
to enforce a lower standard of living upon the masses of the
population.

At the last convention of the Association of National Ad-
vertisers, Dr. Walter B. Pitkin, Professor of the School of
Journalism at Columbia University, played Cassandra to the
assembled ad-men by adding up the costs of the depression
to advertising. "To begin with," said Dr. Pitkin, "we are
left with between 60 and 64 million people at or below the
subsistence level." These are "extra-economic men" as far as
the advertising business is concerned. The arts of "creative
psychiatry" are wasted on them because their buying power
is negligible. The average annual per capita income is down
to $276. If from this is subtracted an average of $77 for fixed
debt charges, we are left with an average of per capita ex-
pendible income of $199. Multiply this by four and we have
$800 as the family average.

But Dr. Pitkin had worse horrors than this to reveal. He
believes that even if we have recovery sufficient to bring
about a return of the pre-depression income levels, this re-
covery will not be accompanied by similar spending. Not
only are there between 60 and 64 million "extra-economic
Americans outside the money and profit system," but they
don't want to get back into this system. Dr. Pitkin cited
examples of middle class professional people, who, having
become adapted to the shock of having to live on eighteen
dollars a week, were content with what they had; at least
they were unashamed, since so many of their friends were in
a similar condition. Dr. Pitkin sums up the problem con-
fronting the advertising profession as follows:

39*

"You have got not merely the problem of scheming to get peo-
ple's income up, but you have got the problem of breaking down
what you might call a degenerate type of social prestige, and that
is a new problem in advertising and selling, it is a new problem in
merchandising which not one manufacturer in the United States
has yet attempted to face.*'

In passing it might be noted that as a result of the "schem-
ing to get people's income up" as conducted by the indus-
trialists who wrote the codes, some of whom were in Dr.
Pitkin's audience, the volume of goods sold in February,
1934, was apparently from 6 to 8 per cent less than in
February, 1933.

The assembled advertising men fired questions at Dr. Pit-
kin. They begged this earnest savant for some hope, for
some way of "meeting the issue." This is what they got:

"We have seen advertising in the last twenty-five years develop
from local commodity advertising, next to trade advertising, then
institutional advertising of a whole domain of businesses. . . .
Those are merely the first movements in a direction toward which
we must go a long way further. You have got to go beyond insti-
tutional advertising to some new kind of philosophy of life adver-
tising. I don't know any better expression for it than that, but
what I mean is that you have got to sell an enormous number of
people in the United States, people of power, people of intelligence
as well as the down-and-outs; you have got to sell them the con-
ception very clearly of the American standard of living as we used
to think of it, and have a return to it with all that it implies."

If this seems fantastic under the circumstances, I can only
point out that among advertising men in general, Dr. Pitkin
is regarded as a top-leader intellectual. The ad-men were made
pretty unhappy on this occasion, for they couldn't see how
they were going to carry out Dr. Pitkin's recommendations.
In effect, what he said was: "What you need is more adver-
tising." And they knew that before.

393

Advertising men are indeed very unhappy these days, very
nervous, with a kind of apocalyptic expectancy. Often when
I have lunched with an agency friend, a half dozen worried
copy writers and art directors have accompanied us. Inva-
riably they want to know when the revolution is coming, and
where will they get off if it does come.

The other day I encountered a very eminent advertising
man indeed, emerging from an ex-speakeasy. He hailed me
jovially and put the usual question: "How's the revolution
coming?"

"Rather badly," I replied. "Although I think you and your
crowd are certainly doing your bit."

"You're damned right," replied this advertising magnifico.
"I've got a big white horse. I call him 'Comrade.' And when
the revolution comes, I'll be right out in front: 'Comrade
Blotz'."

With a sudden chill I reflected that, given the sort of mass
moronism which the advertising business has been manufac-
turing for these many years, something of the sort might
conceivably happen. What that eminent ad -man thought of
as "revolution" was, of course, Fascism. I venture to pre-
dict that when a formidable Fascist movement develops in
America, the ad-men will be right up in front; that the
American versions of Minister of Propaganda and Enlighten-
ment Goebels (the man whom wry-lipped Germans have
Christened "Wotan's Mickey Mouse") will be both numerous
and powerful.

394

THE
JOHN DAY

COMPANY

INC.